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CONTENTS 
 
 P1OK 
 
 INTRODUCTORY ORDINARY PEOPLE 9 
 
 I 
 
 STRAIGHTNESS 27 
 
 II 
 THOROUGHNESS 47 
 
 III 
 
 KINDNESS 65 
 
 IV 
 THRIFT .83 
 
 V 
 
 GRATITUDE . 101 
 
vi CONTENTS 
 
 PACK 
 
 VI 
 
 REVERENCE 121 
 
 VII 
 
 MORAL COURAGE 139 
 
 VIII 
 COURTESY 159 
 
ORDINARY PEOPLE 
 
ORDINARY PEOPLE 
 
 T sometimes occurs to one 
 ihat as there are so many 
 philanthropic societies in 
 our day and another would 
 make no great difference, 
 it might be useful, as well as kindly, to 
 establish a society for the protection of 
 ordinary people. Its subjects would be all 
 persons above the age of twenty-one who 
 had never written a book, nor a maga- 
 zine article, nor a pamphlet, nor a letter 
 to The Times ; who had never stood for 
 Parliament, nor addressed a political meet- 
 ing, nor taken the chair at a charitable 
 
10 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 gathering, nor moved a vote of thanks to 
 a speaker ; who do not hold any view 
 entirely their own on the doctrine of the 
 Christian Church, or the origin of the 
 Bible, or the relation of the sexes, or the 
 division of property; who are not dis- 
 tinguished players at anything, nor bril- 
 liant conversationalists, nor wickedly sar- 
 castic, nor unprinted poets persons, in 
 fact, who do their daily duty, and pay 
 their debts, and act a neighbour's part, 
 and speak about the weather, and go to 
 Church ; persons who are not original nor 
 brilliant nor erratic, who are neither in- 
 ventors nor reformers nor cranks, nor 
 anything else except law-abiding, tax-pay- 
 ing, housekeeping, kind-hearted citizens 
 commonplace people. They endure great 
 wrongs in our day,, and no one is trying 
 
ORDINARY PEOPLE 11 
 
 to redress them, although the world is 
 going crazy with sentiment. No great 
 man of letters has commonplace people 
 within his horizon (although Scott and 
 Dickens had a tender regard for them). 
 The modern writer elaborates for the 
 elect who can admire his precious style ; 
 thoughtful preachers talk over the heads 
 of plain folk, and address themselves to 
 what are called the thoughtful, who are 
 understood to be always wrestling with 
 high-class problems or giving themselves 
 to amazing missions. Art, if the painter 
 wishes to save his reputation with superior 
 critics, abandons scenes of homely life and 
 simple human motives, and labours on 
 pictures which have to be explained like 
 prize puzzles and might as well be painted 
 for the Martians as for the average man 
 
12 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 of this world. The ordinary person is 
 ignored and browbeaten and made to 
 understand that his conversation is a 
 stupidity, that he himself is a weariness, 
 and that unless you can sparkle, however 
 feebly, you have no reason for existence. 
 The ordinary person feels his position, 
 and, although it may seem amazing in a 
 creature of lower organization, is quite as 
 sensitive as the bright people who have 
 the wonderful ideas and say the striking 
 things. It is pathetic to hear him explain, 
 if he be up in years, that " we old fogies 
 are out of it now," and that the young 
 people know everything ; and if he is still 
 young, that he is " not a clever chap," but 
 that there is "no use my trying to take a 
 hand in conversation." Yet the old man 
 may have done a good day's work in the 
 
ORDINARY PEOPLE 13 
 
 world, and the young fellow may have a 
 level head, and both may be of far more 
 value than people whose tongues never 
 cease and who have a windmill in their 
 heads. So I want to make a plea for 
 ordinary folk who are good and for ordi- 
 nary ways of goodness. 
 
 It is a consolation for an ordinary per- 
 son to remember that he belongs to the 
 vast majority of his race, and that if he 
 be outdistanced in talk, he will succeed in 
 the vote. Out of a hundred thousand in- 
 habitants in a city only a handful would 
 be recognized upon a public platform, 
 and out of that handful some were not 
 known yesterday, and will be forgotten 
 to-morrow. The great man of one town 
 may never have been heard of in the 
 next town ; his fame does not extend two 
 
14 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 stations along the line. A few men have 
 a national reputation, but it is always a 
 question of argument whether this or that 
 great name will survive its generation. A 
 century in history only adds some score of 
 names to the immortal roll of the ages. 
 When the generations pass across the 
 stage of time, we only identify a face here 
 and there a Moses, an Alexander, a Paul, 
 a Luther, a Cromwell, a Napoleon, a 
 Washington, a Newton, a Darwin, a Fara- 
 day and the others, perhaps great in 
 their day and doers of great marvels, are 
 now reduced to shadows, to the level of 
 the unknown. 
 
 Perhaps an ordinary person may find 
 comfort in the fact that, after all, name- 
 less people have done some of the great 
 works of human history. Who made the 
 
ORDINARY PEOPLE 15 
 
 first flint knife? Who first cultivated 
 the land? Who first constructed a boat? 
 Who first lit a fire? Who invented the 
 alphabet? Who first struck on the idea 
 of numerals? Who first established gov- 
 ernment? Who carried out the first bar- 
 ter ? Who built the first house ? No one 
 knows, but those were the great inventors 
 and pioneers of the race, and beside their 
 achievements many great discoveries which 
 have won men fame and rank are not 
 worthy to be compared. What is the in- 
 ventor of a reaping machine to the man 
 who first sowed seed? Or the inventor 
 of the steam engine to the man who first 
 put out to sea in his own boat ? Besides, 
 when you come to extraordinary men, who 
 write their names on the pages of history 
 and before whom we all justly bow, how do 
 
16 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 we know there was not an ordinary person 
 behind them who has to divide the credit ? 
 Bimyan gave us the Pilgrim's Progress, 
 but we do not know the names of the good 
 old women whom he heard talking about 
 religion as they sat in the sun, and whose 
 words gave a new direction to his life. 
 Lord Shaftesbury will long be held in 
 honour in England for the social refor- 
 mation that he wrought ; but place, if 
 you please, Lord Shaftesbury's nurse, who 
 taught the lonely child the principles of 
 godliness. The hall rings with applause 
 when a distinguished scholar obtains his 
 degree, but what of the country school- 
 master who first inspired him with the 
 passion for learning? The multitude talk 
 of a distinguished career ; they do not 
 think of the man's father, who toiled and 
 
ORDINARY PEOPLE 17 
 
 saved and sacrificed himself that the lad 
 might have his opportunity. What of the 
 great man's mother, whose name is not 
 buzzed about in the market place ? A very 
 ordinary woman, yet she was the mother 
 of this distinguished man. She nursed 
 him, she trained him, she comforted him, 
 she inspired him; it is possible that this 
 ordinary woman, as you judge her, gave 
 him his brains. He stands upon her 
 shoulder, and is seen of all men, while she 
 is unseen. Every famous life is raised 
 upon the lives of others, as a Venetian 
 palace rests upon the piles beneath the 
 water. What, also, one may ask, could 
 the extraordinary people do without the 
 ordinary ? It is the enthusiasm of a nation 
 which places a statesman in power and 
 enables him to carry out beneficent laws. 
 
 2 
 
18 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 It is the patience and courage of the com- 
 mon soldiers which give the victory to 
 the general. It is the skill and intelligence 
 of artisans which secure the success of the 
 capitalist. It is the audience, eager and 
 responsive, which inspires the poet. The 
 prosperity of a country depends on the 
 millions of people who are doing their 
 tale of work every day, bringing up their 
 children in respectability and religion, 
 and discharging humble household duties 
 and resisting every-day temptations ; the 
 trend of national life depends upon what 
 a multitude of people are thinking and 
 feeling and wishing and striving ; and the 
 goodness of the commonwealth is made 
 up of the character of an innumerable 
 number of undistinguished folk. We may 
 not be philosophers, nor travellers, nor 
 
ORDINARY PEOPLE 19 
 
 statesmen, nor conquerors, yet we ordi- 
 naries have our own sphere. We are 
 the soldiers in the army which won the 
 battle ; we are the multitude to whom the 
 thinkers spoke ; we are the voters by 
 whom the statesmen legislate ; we are the 
 force of which historians write. There 
 are thousands of volumes containing the 
 record of births in the archives of the 
 registrar-general, and the keeper is ac- 
 customed to show a celebrated entry here 
 and there. But all the pages of all the 
 volumes are filled with names, and each 
 name represents a person who has been 
 born into the world, and, in many a case, 
 has lived to old age and has done his piece 
 of work. Without this nameless and in- 
 numerable multitude there had been no 
 work and no race. 
 
20 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 Can any one be sure who is doing the 
 most valuable and lasting work, or how 
 the accounts are to be struck at the close 
 of the day ? Does it follow of necessity 
 that a woman who makes clever speeches 
 on the platform is rendering greater ser- 
 vice to her generation than the house 
 mother, who has guided her household well, 
 and secured the peace and comfort of home 
 to her husband and children? Can the 
 minister who preaches to thousands in the 
 great city be certain that he deserves more 
 of the Church than his country colleague 
 who is quietly building up the character of 
 young men who shall by-and-by make the 
 strength of the city ? Is a brilliant writer 
 a greater gain to the commonwealth than 
 a silent merchant who has extended its 
 commerce to the ends of the earth and 
 
ORDINARY PEOPLE 21 
 
 filled a thousand homes with plenty ? It is 
 impossible to say ; it is not necessary to 
 make comparison ; it is sufficient to re- 
 member that fame may not always mean 
 value, and that the soundest work in the 
 world may be done by obscure people. 
 
 When all has been said, it remains that 
 the one thing we are called upon to do, 
 and the one thing for which we shall be 
 judged, is our duty. There is some par- 
 ticular work which lies to every one's hand 
 which he can do better than any other 
 person. What we ought to be concerned 
 about is not whether it be on a large 
 scale or a small about which we can 
 never be quite certain nor whether it is 
 going to bring us fame or leave us in 
 obscurity an issue which is in the hands 
 of God but that we do it, and that we do 
 
22 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 it with all our might. Having done that, 
 there is no cause to fret ourselves or ask 
 questions which cannot be answered. We 
 may rest with a quiet conscience and a 
 contented heart, for we have filled our 
 place and done what we could. The battle 
 of life extends over a vast area, and it is 
 vain for us to inquire about the other 
 wings of the army ; it is enough that we 
 have received our orders, and that we have 
 held the few feet of ground committed to 
 our charge. There let us fight and there 
 let us die, and so fighting and so dying in 
 the place of duty we cannot be condemned, 
 we must be justified. Brilliant qualities 
 may never be ours, but the homely virtues 
 are within our reach, and character is 
 built up not out of great intellectual gifts 
 and splendid public achievements, but out 
 
ORDINARY PEOPLE 23 
 
 of honesty, industry, thrift, kindness, 
 courtesy, and gratitude, resting upon faith 
 in God and love towards man. And the 
 inheritance of the soul which ranks highest 
 and lasts for ever is character. 
 
STRAIGHTNESS 
 
STRAIGHTNESS 
 
 T seems a far cry from 
 the fifteenth Psalm to a 
 modern exchange, and the 
 circumstances of the East 
 long before Christ, and of 
 the West in our day, are very different. Yet 
 it is a suggestive fact that the moral judg- 
 ment of a Jewish psalmist and a Western 
 merchant agrees to the letter upon the 
 description of a man of honour. No doubt 
 the psalmist, with his genius for religion, 
 states the case for decision after a more 
 impressive fashion " Lord, who shall 
 
28 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 abide in Thy Tabernacle ? Who shall 
 dwell in Thy Holy Hill ? " and the merchant 
 would rather ask, in our secular form of 
 speech, "Is he the right kind ? " It is 
 natural for the Jew to inquire who is fit 
 for fellowship with God, and natural for 
 the Anglo-Saxon to ask who is fit for 
 fellowship with men. But it comes to the 
 same thing in the end, for if a man's 
 morality gives him entrance to God's 
 Tabernacle, he will be welcome in any 
 respectable human society; but if a man 
 be cast out on moral grounds from such 
 society, he may not hope to dwell in God's 
 Holy Hill. The Old Testament writer 
 would call his ideal man righteous, which 
 is one of the lordly words of human speech, 
 and we, in our anxiety to keep clear of 
 cant, would prefer to sum him up as 
 
STRAIGHTNESS 29 
 
 straight ; but let us understand that this 
 familiar term, handed about among old 
 and young, religious and non-religious, is 
 simply the homely equivalent of righteous. 
 An idea, like a soldier, has its parade uni- 
 form and its working dress, and straight is 
 the undress of righteous. Righteousness 
 in the Old Testament is not a theological, 
 but an ethical word, and has to do not 
 with a person's creed, but with a person's 
 character. The righteous man of the 
 Psalms is the righteous man the world 
 over, in every exchange, every club, every 
 society, every workshop. And in calling 
 righteousness by the name of straightness, 
 we have acclimatized this noble quality in 
 the speech of modern life. 
 
 There are two types of men, and by 
 their comparison we can remind ourselves 
 
30 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 what is meant by straight. There is the 
 man who may be clever and interesting 
 and good-natured, and even, in a sense, 
 pious, but on whom you may not depend. 
 If you ask him an inconvenient question, 
 he will prevaricate in his answer, and you 
 will find that his words have a double 
 meaning, so that while you wait for him 
 at the front and, as you suppose, only door 
 of the house, he has sneaked out at the 
 back door. If you make a bargain with 
 him, it will be your wisdom to have his 
 proposal in black and white without delay, 
 since the chances are, if the market goes 
 against him, he will assure you, with many 
 a profession of regret, that you misunder- 
 stood his figure. When goods are de- 
 livered by this man, it is absolutely neces- 
 sary to verify every quality by the sample, 
 
STRAIGHTNESS 31 
 
 since, through some carelessness on the 
 part of his people, an inferior value is apt 
 to be sent. If he asks for assistance in 
 some emergency, you may take it for 
 granted that his affairs are much worse 
 than he has told you ; and if he succeeds 
 in borrowing money, he will have a 
 hundred excuses for not repaying it. 
 Should his firm be compelled to stop pay- 
 ment, very strong remarks indeed will be 
 made upon the condition of his books ; and 
 if he becomes bankrupt, the chances are 
 he will be refused a discharge. When he 
 plunges into a controversy, he will mis- 
 quote his opponent's words, or wrench 
 them out of their context ; and when he 
 played games at school, he came as near 
 cheating as he could. He is tricky, shifty, 
 smooth-tongued, double-faced, not straight. 
 
32 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 Over against him there is the man who 
 may he plain in manner, and blunt of 
 speech, and slow in understanding, and 
 who, perhaps, may make no profession of 
 religion, hut who can be depended upon at 
 all times, in every word he speaks and in 
 everything he does. His smile may not be 
 so taking nor his style so plausible, but 
 he looks you in the face and his words 
 have the accent of sincerity. He means 
 what he says and he says what he means, 
 and if you quote him, you will never be 
 left in the lurch. He may be long in 
 coming to a decision and he may be hard 
 in a bargain. When the bargain is made, 
 whether by word of mouth or a nod of the 
 head, just as much as by a letter which has 
 been copied, he will stand by it, though he 
 lose his last penny. He will not whine 
 
STRAIGHTNESS 33 
 
 about his losses, for they are the fortune 
 of war, nor will he brag about his honesty, 
 for he expects that to be taken for granted. 
 If you have to meet him in debate, he may 
 press you hard and be very keen in his 
 views, but he will always deal fairly with 
 you, looking for the sense of what you 
 said, and not taking any advantage of the 
 words. If he has a quarrel with you, he 
 will have it out with you face to face, and 
 would scorn to slander you behind your 
 back. He also may be unable some day 
 to pay his debts, and that will be the 
 bitterest trial of his life ; well, he will 
 
 i 
 
 work night and day to regain his pros- 
 perity, and then he will pay his creditors, 
 every one, with interest. Never was he 
 known to make capital out of any doubtful 
 point in a game, for, though he was eager 
 
 3 
 
34 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 to win, he was still more determined to 
 win like a sportsman. And this is what 
 we mean by a straight man. 
 
 There are many things for which one 
 may fairly criticize the world, and by that 
 I mean the people who do not profess to 
 be religious ; but let us freely acknowledge 
 that they have at least one good quality, 
 and that is an honest appreciation of 
 straightness. The man who cheats at a 
 game, who goes back upon a bargain, who 
 shirks the post of danger, who filches away 
 another doctor's patient, who exposes a 
 woman's frailty, who brings up the catas- 
 trophe in a man's private life, is despised 
 and cast out by the world. The pariah of 
 the world is a sneak, and for him there is 
 no more mercy than for a rat. Upon the 
 other hand, while one firmly believes that 
 
STRAIGHTNESS 35 
 
 the Church of Christ sets upon the whole 
 an example of unparalleled virtue, yet one 
 is haunted with the feeling that the 
 Church has not always laid enough stress 
 upon righteousness, in the Old Testament 
 sense of the word, and that she has given 
 the idea the cold shoulder. She has en- 
 forced the commandments which touch on 
 piety and on purity ; she has not given so 
 clear a sound upon the commandment of 
 truthfulness. If any man denied the creed 
 or if any man was a gross evil-liver, the 
 Church, except in her worst times, would 
 deal strictly with him ; but if he were 
 simply dishonest and disingenuous, mean 
 and tricky, she has been apt to let him 
 alone, so that he came to feel that she did 
 not care, and his own conscience was 
 lowered. Perhaps one might go further, 
 
 M 
 
36 HOMELY VIETUES 
 
 and say that crookedness has been a 
 religious sin and has almost had the 
 sanction of the Church, although it has 
 ever received the manifest judgments of 
 God. Abraham was the father of the 
 faithful and a noble type of religion, but 
 Abraham lied to Pharaoh with just that 
 kind of lie which finds its shelter beneath 
 the shadow of religion. He played upon 
 words, saying that Sarah was his sister, 
 which, in a sense, she was, but allowing 
 Pharaoh to understand that she was not 
 his wife, which of course she was. It was 
 not a downright falsehood, but a guarded 
 and calculated departure from the truth, a 
 policy in which the religious conscience has 
 shown itself an adept. There is a kind of 
 man who will not drink nor swear, who 
 believes in the deity of Christ and the 
 
STRAIGHTNESS 37 
 
 eternal punishment of the wicked, but who 
 has no more idea of personal honour than 
 a fox, and who will do things at which a 
 high-class man of the world would be 
 aghast. We are inclined sometimes to 
 think that if a man be religious he 
 must be straightforward, and if he be 
 straightforward he must be religious. 
 But we have leaped too hastily to a con- 
 clusion, for there are people with a genuine 
 sense of religion who are as crooked as a 
 corkscrew, and there are people who would 
 never dream of calling themselves re- 
 ligious, but yet they are as straight as a 
 die. As, for instance, Jacob in the one 
 class, and in the other such a man as the 
 Duke of Wellington among Englishmen, 
 and Abraham Lincoln among Americans. 
 Nothing has brought such scandal on 
 
38 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 religion in public life as the dishonesty of a 
 certain kind of religious people who will 
 call themselves by the name of Christ, and 
 take part in religious meetings, and set 
 themselves up as censors of morals, but 
 who betray the trust of poor investors, and 
 bring banks to ruin, and start bogus 
 companies, and make discreditable bank- 
 ruptcies, and obtain possession of the 
 means of relatives and trustful people, 
 so that every decent man condemns them, 
 and, when they are not cunning enough, 
 the law fortunately lands them in prison. 
 With their mixture of Phariseeism and 
 duplicity, with their cant and their ly- 
 ing, such people are a reproach and a 
 byword, and are ever being flung in the 
 face of religion. While they are praying 
 and preaching, young men are declaring 
 
STRAIGHTNESS 39 
 
 everywhere that it is because of them they 
 are not Christians. If the Old Testament 
 gospel of morality had been more strin- 
 gently preached, the Church would not have 
 been cursed with the presence of men who 
 have dared to speak for her. but whom 
 neither God in His Holy Hill, nor the 
 world in her market-places, can tolerate, 
 because they do not walk uprightly nor 
 work righteousness. 
 
 Nor has the Church as an historic body 
 established so high a claim as one would 
 like for straightforwardness. Why is it 
 that priests have earned so bad a name and 
 been so keenly hated by the people ? Why 
 has one order been expelled from nearly 
 every country in Europe, and has often 
 brought cruel persecutions upon its fellow 
 Christians ? It were a slander to say that 
 
40 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 all priests are bad, since many have been 
 men of singular devotion and of vast 
 sacrifices ; but it is a fact that, as a class, 
 priests have been less than straight. They 
 have used words in a double sense; they 
 have practised the doctrine of reserve ; 
 they have invented astounding excuses for 
 falsehood ; they have brought casuistry to 
 the height of a science. One of their chief 
 characteristics has been that rat-like 
 cunning which Browning illustrates in 
 the priest of the Ring and the Book. 
 Whether called priests or not, all ecclesi- 
 astics are tempted to be crafty and 
 diplomatic. They make up catching 
 motions ; they devise subtle schemes 
 of policy ; they are afraid of exciting 
 prejudices; they are fond of ambiguous 
 words. Certainly 110 one has ever said 
 
STRAIGHTNESS 41 
 
 that they were simple and guileless. 
 There are fair grounds for saying that 
 while the Church has taken the intel- 
 lectual failing of heresy and made it into 
 a sin, she has condoned the moral failing 
 of trickery and almost raised it to a 
 virtue. 
 
 Has it ever happened to us to have a 
 dispute, say, about a statement we have 
 made, or about a matter of business, or 
 about family affairs, or even about a 
 game with a man of the world, and he 
 told us plainly that we had acted dis- 
 honourably ? Not illegally which is a 
 different matter, and has to be tried by a 
 different standard but dishonourably, as 
 between man and man, when tried by 
 the working code of straightness. If he 
 was wrong it was a bitter moment 
 
42 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 that he should have thought so badly 
 
 p 
 of us ; but if he was right was it not 
 
 ghastly ? What did we do in that moment 
 when the light was suddenly turned on 
 in the cellar of our souls, and we 
 saw the loathsome creatures of darkness 
 making for their holes ? Did we acknow- 
 ledge our sin to man and God, or did we 
 try to justify ourselves, and afterwards 
 which is the cheapest thing that we could 
 do pretend that we were martyrs for 
 religion's sake ? When Pharaoh told 
 Abraham to his face that he was a liar, it 
 was one of the lamentable paradoxes in 
 the history of religion, for in that hour 
 Pharaoh stood higher than Abraham 
 before the conscience of men and in the 
 sight of God. 
 
 If any one be conscious that he has a taint 
 
STRAIGHTNESS 43 
 
 of crookedness in his blood, and that he is 
 inclined to play tricks ; if he has already 
 been exposed and put to shame because he 
 did not speak the truth, and his hands were 
 not clean, let him face the situation and 
 bestir himself. There is nothing but 
 contempt and humiliation in store for the 
 dishonourable man at the hands of the 
 world, nothing but self-reproach and self- 
 loathing within his own soul. His own 
 wife, try as she may, will not be able 
 to respect him, and his children, as 
 one thing after another becomes plain 
 to them, will be ashamed of him. And 
 whatever he believes and however he 
 prays, there can be no welcome for him 
 with God, who is the fountain of truth and 
 righteousness. The thoughts of men are 
 often foolish and their judgments vain ; 
 
44 HOMELY YIBTUES 
 
 but, after all, they honour straightness. 
 The ways of God are often dark and past 
 finding out, but of one thing we may be 
 sure the blessing of God rests upon 
 righteousness, both in this world and in 
 that which is to come. 
 
THOROUGHNESS 
 
II 
 
 THOROUGHNESS 
 
 HEN one's position is assured 
 he can go where he pleases, 
 and as thoroughness will 
 appear in many humble 
 places before this chapter is 
 ended, it may be well to remind ourselves 
 at the beginning that it holds high rank 
 in the religious life. Our Master was 
 inspired by this principle when He would 
 allow no disciple to turn Him from 
 the Cross, and ceased not in His high 
 endeavour till He had finished the work 
 which His Father gave Him to do. He 
 
 47 
 
48 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 was severe upon impulsive profession with- 
 out stability of action, and He gave His 
 highest praise not to brilliant ability, but 
 to faithful service. His commandment 
 unto His followers was to be faithful 
 unto death, and His promise a crown of 
 life. St. Paul exhorts his converts to 
 work out their salvation with fear and 
 trembling, and declares that all the energy 
 of his life was gathered to a point, " this 
 one thing I do." One of the chief con- 
 ditions of victory in the Kingdom of God 
 is thoroughness. 
 
 The same law runs in ordinary life, and 
 he only need expect to attain success and 
 win the honour of his fellow men who 
 is thorough. The reason why men fail 
 is, in five cases out of six, not through 
 want of influence or brains, or opportunity, 
 
THOROUGHNESS 49 
 
 or good guidance, but because they are 
 slack ; and the reason why certain men 
 with few advantages succeed, is that they 
 are diligent, concentrated, persevering and 
 conscientious because, in fact, they are 
 thorough. One sees every day the story of 
 the hare and the tortoise repeated, when 
 the bright man is outdistanced by an 
 unpromising competitor, because he is 
 self-confident and erratic. An irregular 
 swiftness has no chance in the end of the 
 day against the pace which may be slow, 
 but is unresting. As the conditions of 
 labour in every department of human life 
 become more exacting, there will be no use 
 for the shiftless and incapable men. His 
 preserves, where he can mismanage and 
 not be punished, are growing fewer every 
 year ; neither a merchant, nor a college 
 
 4 
 
50 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 tutor, nor the Church, nor the public 
 service will tolerate him soon ; the day is 
 close at hand when even the English army 
 will have none of him, and the last resort 
 of brave incapables will be closed. Society 
 is beginning to demand that whatever a 
 man professes to do he must be able to 
 do, or else Society will wash her hands of 
 an unprofitable servant. If the slack man 
 does not mend his ways, he will have to go 
 to the workhouse. 
 
 People conceal their inherent slackness 
 from themselves by all kinds of ingenious 
 excuses. When they are caught tripping 
 in their own department of knowledge it is 
 because their minds are so taken up with 
 principles that they cannot keep hold of 
 every minute detail, or they blame their 
 treacherous memory as if their minds 
 
THOROUGHNESS 51 
 
 were simply crammed with goods, but this 
 tricky servant brought the wrong article. 
 When they miss an engagement or have 
 not finished their work in time, it is due to 
 the multitude of their affairs. As if we 
 did not know that the busiest man is 
 usually the most exact and the idlest man 
 has his time most crowded. When things 
 come to the worst, they fall back on 
 absent-mindedness, which, as they secretly 
 imagine, is associated with genius, and 
 ought to place them beyond criticism. 
 No doubt there are people who seem 
 to have been born without the faculty of 
 memory, just as there are people who are 
 born blind, and there are other people in 
 whose mind there is a loose wheel, just as 
 there is a certain proportion of our fellow 
 men in lunatic asylums ; but, as a rule, 
 
52 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 those excuses, when they are boiled down, 
 simply come to persistent and culpable 
 slackness. 
 
 Thoroughness can prove itself in various 
 ways, and not least by honest thinking. 
 It is not good to be a bigot, and to give no 
 credit for intelligence to our opponents, 
 either in politics or in religion ; but there 
 is something worse than bigotry, and that is 
 instability to have no opinion except what 
 is pumped into you by your neighbour, or 
 to have one opinion to-day and another to- 
 morrow, or never to rise above opinion, 
 and to reach conviction. This type of man 
 is neither Liberal nor Conservative, neither 
 Republican nor Democrat ; in England he 
 is said to have a cross-bench-mind, and in 
 America he is called a mugwump, and in 
 neither country does he receive any great 
 
THOROUGHNESS 53 
 
 measure of intellectual respect. His inde- 
 cision may be due to a certain quality 
 of mind which never can come to a conclu- 
 sion, and never can take a side strongly, but 
 the chances are that want of conviction 
 means intellectual indolence. Surely it is 
 our duty to think out the great subjects of 
 life to our furthest limits, to form our 
 creed by the best light God has given us, 
 and having won our creed, to live and 
 defend it. Let us believe something with 
 all our might, and while the best thing is 
 to believe in Christ and to be a thorough- 
 going Christian, the next best thing is to 
 believe, as St. Paul once did, another creed, 
 and to be true to it, for the day will come 
 when God will give to the honest thinker 
 more light, and he will be all the braver 
 soldier of Christ because he had been a 
 
54 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 brave enemy. We would respect ourselves 
 more and be stronger men if we could only 
 take our stand somewhere, and, where we 
 stood, be prepared to die. 
 
 Thoroughness should also brace our 
 habits in daily life. No doubt there is an 
 accuracy which is niggling and a regard 
 for order which is slavish ; there is also an 
 inaccuracy and a disorder which disfigure 
 life from morning till evening ; and to es- 
 cape being a Pharisee in this matter one 
 need not be a publican. Some people seem 
 to have made a rule of unpunctuality ; they 
 are late in rising, late for meals, late for 
 trains, late for engagements, late even for 
 pleasure ; they are exact and accurate in 
 one thing only in being so many minutes 
 behind time. They are dull of hearing in 
 the morning, their watches are ever going 
 
THOROUGHNESS 55 
 
 slow ; beyond all other people they are de- 
 tained by unexpected visitors or sudden 
 duty. No one may depend upon them ; 
 they are a trial unto their friends and the 
 scorn of their enemies ; and the cause of 
 their shame is slackness. There is the 
 woman who is always badly dressed, with- 
 out neatness and without taste ; and when 
 you see a woman with unmended gloves 
 and a torn dress, you may be sure that she 
 is an incapable housekeeper and a helpless 
 wife, for if a woman has not spirit enough 
 to keep her dress in repair she is bound to 
 be slack in every duty of life. There is 
 the man who writes so badly that he is 
 convinced himself that he has a literary 
 gift, in which case the profession of letters 
 has the easiest condition of entrance and 
 the largest number of members among all 
 
56 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 the departments of human activity. Il- 
 legible writing is a slovenly habit for which 
 no excuse can be offered except want of 
 education, and its punishment falls on 
 innocent people, on postmen, on clerks, on 
 busy professional men, and on friends who 
 cannot understand the news which has been 
 sent. The school, large or small, which 
 does not teach its boys to write should be 
 marked inefficient, and the people who will 
 not do their best to write legibly should be 
 classed with the illiterate. 
 
 Thoroughness should be vindicated in 
 the work to which we have been called and 
 by which we have to be judged. If we 
 play a game, let us strive to play it well, 
 and not be a " footy " ; if we undertake a 
 piece of work, let us finish it to the last jot 
 and tittle. If we profess a subject of 
 
THOROUGHNESS 57 
 
 knowledge, let us have it at our finger 
 ends. If we take up a scheme, let us see it 
 through ; and if we choose a side, let us 
 play the man. There is honour for the 
 man who can be trusted to the end and 
 whose work does not need to be done over 
 again, who can always be found in his own 
 place, and will always do what is expected 
 of him. There is continual dishonour for 
 the person who is slipshod and unreliable, 
 and fickle and lazy, for he is like the reed 
 which pierces the hand that leans upon it. 
 Nowhere is thoroughness more needed than 
 in religious work, nowhere is slackness 
 more prevalent. There are Christians who 
 serve Christ as diligently and faithfully as 
 they do their earthly work, and they shall 
 not miss their reward ; but many of Christ's 
 servants would not be tolerated for a week 
 
58 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 by any other master. The poorest joint- 
 stock company in the land is better served by 
 its directors than many congregations are 
 by their office-bearers. There are no teachers 
 anywhere so ignorant and so casual as certain 
 Sunday-school teachers ; there is no clerk 
 in a dry-goods store dare treat his duty as 
 lightly as some of the voluntary officers of 
 the Christian Church. They will absent 
 themselves without leave and without ex- 
 cuse ; they will never inquire how their 
 work is being done or whether it is done 
 at all ; they will not take the trouble to 
 prepare themselves to do it, and they are 
 not concerned when it fails in their hands. 
 They will place their pleasure and their 
 fancies, an4 their social engagements, and 
 their imaginary ailments before their 
 Christian duty. And it would be difficult 
 
THOROUGHNESS 59 
 
 to say how little must be the burden, how 
 short must be the time, that they would 
 be willing to count an obligation upon them 
 and would be prepared to face. One is 
 sometimes inclined to propose a general 
 resignation of the Christian staff, and then 
 an invitation to all who are prepared to do 
 Christ's work as well as the work of the 
 world is done, and it might be that three 
 hundred thoroughgoing men like the Band 
 of Gideon would do more for Christ than 
 ten times the number of irresponsible 
 casuals. 
 
 And thoroughness takes its highest form 
 in character, where slackness is a germ of 
 destruction. One of the most disappoint- 
 ing and dangerous people in society is the 
 man or woman who is agreeable, and plau- 
 sible, and sparkling, and amusing, but in- 
 
60 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 sincere, changeable, and unprincipled and 
 facile. There is no disloyalty, no baseness, 
 such a person may not be capable of, not 
 so much because he is immoral, but because 
 he is slack. You must not count him a 
 friend, since he may cast you off to- 
 morrow; you must not assume he will 
 stand temptation, since his character is 
 weak at the foundation. Character is the 
 ground of trust and the guarantee for good 
 living, and that character only is sound 
 which rests upon a good conscience and a 
 clean heart and a strong will. 
 
 What one fears is that a slovenly habit 
 of work may in the end mean a slovenly 
 soul, for character is established by action. 
 As we carry ourselves in an innumerable 
 series of acts from morning till night, doing 
 our work slackly with detached mind and 
 
THOROUGHNESS 61 
 
 nerveless hands, or doing it thoroughly 
 with a scrupulous conscience and full 
 purpose of heart, we are either building 
 our house upon the sand, and the first flood 
 will sweep it away, or upon the rock, 
 against which the fiercest flood will beat 
 in vain. 
 
KINDNESS 
 
Ill 
 
 KINDNESS 
 
 T seems as if there were a 
 fashion in virtues as in 
 dress, and that private 
 kindness were more at 
 
 home in the past than 
 in the present. The generation which 
 is bidding us good-bye, and whom 
 in our superior moments we criticize, 
 was not ashamed of generous emo- 
 tions. Our fathers met their fellow 
 creatures upon a basis of unaffected 
 cordiality; they took an affectionate in- 
 
 5 
 
66 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 terest in the affairs of their friends ; they 
 were still capable of shaking hands. Their 
 faces gave proof of the warmth within ; 
 they did not pose nor use falsetto ad- 
 jectives ; they were sincere, straightfor- 
 ward, warm-hearted. Our generation is 
 apt to receive its friends upon a stage, 
 with the gesture and expression fixed by 
 the rule of fashion ; it is shocked by any 
 outbreak of human feeling, and will smile 
 feebly when wished a Happy New Year, 
 as if apologizing for a lapse into bar- 
 barism. It conceals affection and sup- 
 presses feeling, although practising little 
 tricks and artificial moods for dramatic 
 effect. Amid this cant of up-to-date 
 language, this smart attitudinizing, this 
 " perfect devotion " to a hundred different 
 people, this calculated rapture over an 
 
KINDNESS 67 
 
 incident which is forgotten next minute, 
 this studied enthusiasm for a cause taken 
 up by some great lady, this wearisome 
 hypocrisy of manners, one longs for the 
 unconventional simplicity and the reality 
 of other days. We grow weary as we 
 hear the note of conversation taken from 
 a pitch fork, as we see faces arranged 
 for an occasion, and then disarranged 
 again to be ready for the next scene. 
 We welcome as a relief the veriest 
 Philistine with a heart in his bosom and 
 no fear of man before his eyes, who 
 grasps our hand like a man and drives 
 us before him in the joy of meeting. 
 
 The depreciation of kindness in private 
 life, which is one of the features of our 
 day, is very largely due to the fashion 
 of intellectualism, but yet human nature 
 
68 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 below the surface of crazes and phrases 
 remains the same, and his fellows still 
 judge a man by his heart rather than 
 by his head. When the jury is selected, 
 not from a coterie, but from the market- 
 place, the person who is kind will ever 
 be preferred to the person who is clever, 
 and " thoughtful," to use a cant word of 
 our day, is still less than warm-hearted. 
 Walter Scott and Dickens will ever have 
 a larger hold upon the people than Hardy 
 and Meredith, not because their art is 
 finer, but because their spirit is kindlier. 
 An affectionate child is more welcome 
 than those monsters of modern precosity 
 who furnish their foolish parents with 
 sayings for quotation, and who have 
 worn out all healthy sensations at the 
 age of ten. The girl who is honest, 
 
KINDNESS 69 
 
 unaffected, considerate, good natured, still 
 receives the prize of respect and of love. 
 No young man is better liked than he 
 who has a genuine interest in the aged 
 and little children, in poor lads and in 
 weak people. People mention with pa- 
 thetic delight that although such and 
 such a man be so able, yet none is more 
 mindful, and here it is interesting to 
 note how the mind is brought under 
 subjection to the heart, for when we say 
 mindful we do not mean intellectual, but 
 helpful. Women who create around them 
 a quiet and genial atmosphere will never 
 want for grateful subjects. Hot temper 
 is condoned by the world if there be in 
 the man a heart of love yet greater than 
 the passing flash of rage. People will 
 put up with hasty words and discourteous 
 
70 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 actions for the true heart which is behind 
 them, and will remember the shining of 
 the sun long after they have forgotten 
 the thunderstorm. Many a sinner against 
 God and man has been forgiven both 
 in heaven and earth because he loved 
 much. No cleverness and no success can 
 redeem heartlessness. People who are not 
 constant and sympathetic, who are showy 
 and affected, may imagine that they are 
 admired they are really detested. The 
 chief crown of life is the love of your 
 fellow men, and that is ever given to 
 those who have a heart. 
 
 If any one should think that the value 
 of kindness is exaggerated let him re- 
 member its moral quality. Why is it 
 that some people are unkind? Usually 
 because they are hard or cynical, ~br 
 
KINDNESS 71 
 
 thoughtless or worldly. In short, because 
 however ready may be their flow of 
 sentiment or graceful their manners, they 
 are at the core thoroughly selfish. They 
 do not help their neighbours, because 
 they are always engaged furthering their 
 own personal interests; they do not 
 feel for their neighbours, because their 
 own joys and sorrows absorb their whole 
 stock of emotion ; they do not think 
 about their neighbours, because their one 
 imperious subject is themselves. They 
 are the slaves of a masterful egotism, 
 which thinks and feels and acts hi terms 
 of self ; to which the world is but the 
 stage scenery for a single character and 
 other men only a chorus. What does 
 it mean that a person is kind ? That 
 he remembers other people, that he is 
 
72 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 not bound up with his own affairs, that 
 he is capable of making sacrifices, that 
 he is willing to serve his fellow men. 
 It means that his heart is not of stone, 
 but of flesh, that his spirit is not of the 
 world, but of Christ. Religion may be 
 tested by many virtues, but it may be 
 safely said that its surest proof is kind- 
 ness. One may be pure and honest and 
 industrious, but if he is not kind he is 
 so far less a Christian. One, on the 
 other hand, may have many faults, but 
 if there be in him a pitiful and friendly 
 heart, he is so far a Christian. He who 
 shows not mercy, it is fair to argue, has 
 never tasted the mercy of God, and he 
 who never thinks of his brother has 
 never realized how God has thought of 
 him. While he that loves proves that 
 
KINDNESS 73 
 
 he has been loved, for love is of God, 
 and he who helps proves that he has 
 been helped by Jesus Christ. When we 
 rate kindness as a form of facile good 
 humour, we are depreciating this virtue ; 
 it is nothing else than the love of God 
 in common life. 
 
 "For mercy, pity, peace, and love, 
 
 Is God our Father dear ; 
 And mercy, pity, peace and love, 
 Is man His child and care . . . 
 
 And all must love the human form, 
 In heathen, Turk, or Jew. 
 
 Where mercy, love and pity dwell, 
 There God is dwelling, too." 
 
 Another reason why we ought to make 
 much of kindness is that unkindness con- 
 tributes so largely to human misery, and 
 kindness to happiness. There are the 
 major and the minor trials of life, and 
 
74 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 the major trials, thank God ! do not come 
 often, although their shadow may remain 
 for years. We are apt to think that they 
 are beyond human consolation, and yet the 
 mourner will tell you that in the day of 
 sore distress he was greatly comforted by 
 a letter, by a word fitly spoken, by a call 
 at the right time, by a little attention. The 
 heart is lonely in the straits of life, and is 
 thankful for company ; it is wounded and 
 bruised, and welcomes the wine and oil. 
 The good Samaritan is the proof of God, 
 and the children of affliction learn that 
 they have not been forsaken. There is 
 no balm for sorrow, no re-enforcement for 
 faith outside the Bible like your neigh- 
 bour's kindness. Much of the sorrow of 
 life, however, springs from the accumula- 
 tion, day by day and year by year, of little 
 
KINDNESS 75 
 
 trials a letter written in less than courte- 
 ous terms, a wrangle at the breakfast 
 table over some arrangement of the day, 
 the rudeness of an acquaintance on the 
 way to the city, an unfriendly act on the 
 part of another firm, a cruel criticism 
 needlessly reported by some meddler, a 
 feline amenity at afternoon tea, the dis- 
 obedience of one of your children, a social 
 slight by one of your circle, a controversy 
 too hotly conducted. The trials within this 
 class are innumerable, and consider, not 
 one of them is inevitable, not one of them 
 but might have been spared if we or our 
 brother man had had a grain of kindli- 
 * ness. Our social insolences, our irritating 
 manners, our censorious judgment, our 
 venomous letters, our pin-pricks in con- 
 versation, are all forms of deliberate un- 
 
76 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 kindness, and are all evidences of an ill- 
 conditioned nature. 
 
 Is not the burden of life, with its 
 labours and anxieties, temptations and 
 bereavements, heavy enough without our 
 voluntary additions ? Why should our 
 neighbour's temper be embittered, and his 
 heart wounded, and his peace broken, and 
 the limited joy of his life be reduced by 
 our thoughtless deeds and by our foolish 
 words, when we might have done so much 
 to add to his joy and to help him along 
 his way ? Ought we not to make a cove- 
 nant with ourselves and ask God to seal 
 it with His blessing, that whether or not 
 we be able to give large sums of money or 
 to render great services, whether or net 
 we be able or brilliant, that at least we 
 will be kind from the time we rise to the 
 
KINDNESS 77 
 
 time we lie down in our homes, in our 
 offices, through our pleasure and through 
 our work to the people of our blood and 
 to the people of our acquaintance ? Let us 
 resolve that if we are out of sorts, or if 
 we have been disappointed in our work, 
 we will not take it out of our neighbours, 
 our wife and children, our servants, or 
 our clerks ; that we will not debate and 
 wrangle in speech about politics and re- 
 ligion and a hundred other things of less 
 importance, till every one is on edge ; that 
 if we know that a person has some fad, 
 we will give it a wide berth and save our 
 brother from himself ; that if there be 
 some innocent subject on which he loves 
 to talk, we will be his attentive hear- 
 ers. That if any one has had a success, 
 we will make much of it ; that if 
 
78 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 any one has had a reverse, we will let 
 him know that we also suffer ; that we 
 will never pass a friend without a signal 
 of good will ; that if we hear evil gossip 
 we will immediately bury it, and that if 
 we hear a good report about any one, we 
 will blaze it abroad ; that we will carry 
 ourselves patiently with tiresome, irri- 
 tating, sour, and uncharitable people. And 
 to this end that we will curb our vanity, 
 pride, and self-importance and evil 
 temper. 
 
 Might we not also go a little further 
 and resolve that every day we will do at 
 least one act of kindness to some neigh- 
 bour. Let us write a letter in such terms 
 that the post will bring pleasure next day 
 to some house ; make a call just to let a 
 friend know that he has been in our heart; 
 
KINDNESS 79 
 
 give a young man starting in business 
 some bit of work to encourage him in his 
 first year ; send a gift on some one's 
 birthday, or on his marriage day, or on 
 Christmas Day, or on any day we can in- 
 vent ; exert ourselves to get a widow's son 
 into a situation, or a lad into a school. If 
 we have a carriage, let invalids have the 
 use of it ; if we have a box in the concert 
 hall, let us remember that Providence has 
 given some people the love of music with- 
 out silver and gold ; let us make children 
 glad with things which they long for and 
 cannot obtain. And a thousand other 
 things which we could do within a year 
 if we had eyes to see and a heart to feel, 
 and had the will to take some trouble. If 
 every one did an act of daily kindness to 
 his neighbour, and refused to do any un- 
 
80 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 kindness, half the sorrow of this world 
 would be^ lifted and disappear. 
 
 What we mean to do let us do quickly, 
 for life is short, and, as has been said, we 
 shall not come this way again. The sun 
 will soon be setting for every one of us, 
 and we will be coming to the Master to 
 give an account of the day's work and to 
 receive His judgment. And we are going 
 to be judged by nothing more or less than 
 by our kindness or our unkindness. They 
 who were kind shall go to the right hand 
 He said it who Himself is Judge and 
 they who are unkind shall go to the left 
 hand, for inasmuch as we have done it 
 unto the least of His brethren, we have 
 dealt kindly with the Lord Himself. 
 
THRIFT 
 
 6 
 
IV 
 THRIFT 
 
 HE Miracle of the Loaves 
 and Fishes is an illustra- 
 tion at once of magnificent 
 generosity and of careful 
 economy, and reminds us 
 of the difference between abundance and 
 waste. The guests whom the Master 
 entertained were in number about five 
 thousand, they had of the loaves and 
 fishes simple, wholesome fare, as much 
 as they would. When they were satis- 
 fied the fragments of broken bread and 
 
 83 
 
84 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 unused fish were gathered up by the 
 apostles and placed in baskets, and this 
 was done according to the command of 
 Christ that nothing should be lost. As 
 Nature, with all her boundless resources 
 and lavish display of beauty, yet skilfully 
 and anxiously uses up every scrap of her 
 material and refuses to recognize such a 
 thing as refuse, so Jesus with the power 
 of creation at His disposal will not allow 
 that the remains of a feast be flung away, 
 but insists that what has not been needed 
 by His guests shall be kept for some poorer 
 people. It is a convincing and authorita- 
 tive application of the law of thrift. 
 
 Thoughtless people are apt to make a 
 contrast between generosity and thrift, as 
 if they are not more likely to be the com- 
 plement of one another, and the reason of 
 
THRIFT 85 
 
 their mistake is a misunderstanding of 
 both ideas. Generosity such people con- 
 found with extravagance, and thrift they 
 spell meanness, and so they conclude that 
 if a man spends his money in every foolish 
 whim and injurious gift, he is as large- 
 hearted as he is open-handed. While if his 
 neighbour makes conscience of every 
 shilling which he lays out either on himself 
 or on other people, and studies how he can 
 best utilize the means of which God has 
 made him trustee, that he is both close- 
 fisted and lean-hearted. According to this 
 view of it, extravagance, even in its more 
 vulgar and ostentatious form, is a vice so 
 splendid that it is equal to a virtue, and 
 thrift, even when it is guided by the 
 highest principles, is so petty and sordid a 
 virtue that it is next door to a vice. 
 
86 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 As there is no vice without a certain 
 kinship to virtue, and no virtue which is 
 not in danger of being sold into the slavery 
 of vice, one recognizes that extravagance 
 is with some men a proof of kindness, and 
 that in some forms it is not without its 
 attraction. When one bestows his benefits 
 upon so large a scale that he gives far 
 more than can be used, he may not always 
 be blamed, for our Lord Himself did not 
 limit Himself by the appetite of His guests, 
 but made an overflowing provision with 
 enough and to spare. There is also a thrift 
 which is so cold and accurate that it seems 
 to weigh every morsel in the scales of a 
 chemist, and to be concerned about grains 
 and scruples, and one is not drawn to the 
 host who has studied his guests' appetites 
 so carefully that when the feast is ended 
 
THRIFT 87 
 
 the last loaf and fish are also gone. Waste 
 is the shadow upon generosity, miserliness 
 on thrift, and it is a grave question 
 whether the wastrel or the miser is a 
 greater curse to the community, but 
 certainly the miser is the more unlovely 
 character. 
 
 Thrift is like some misunderstood char- 
 acter in history, and has to be redeemed 
 from opprobrium ; and Carlyle, who re- 
 moved the dust of many years from the 
 portrait of Cromwell, and placed him 
 where he ought to be, among the chief 
 rulers of England, has also done his best to 
 redeem the idea of thrift. He points out 
 with much force that upon this despised 
 and commonplace virtue, which superior 
 people are apt to assign to hard-working 
 peasants and little tradesmen, has been 
 
88 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 built up great and strong empires. " For 
 my own part, I perceive well there was 
 never yet any great empire founded, 
 Roman, English, down to Prussian or 
 Dutch, nor in fact any great mass of work 
 got achieved under the sun, but it was 
 founded even upon this humble-looking 
 quality of thrift, and became achievable 
 in virtue of the same." It was to 
 rigid economy, which sometimes no doubt 
 touched the extreme of avarice, that 
 Frederick the Great partly owed his power. 
 It was to the saving habits of the French 
 country folk, which no doubt are some- 
 times sordid and grinding, that their 
 nation owed its recovery from the great 
 disaster of 1871. And it is their simple 
 life and careful use of means which has 
 secured to the working people of Holland 
 
THRIFT 89 
 
 and Switzerland their modest and con- 
 tented prosperity. A great empire may be 
 able to endure the strain of luxury for a 
 while, either through the accumulated re- 
 sources of the past or the immense riches 
 of its land, which explains why Britain and 
 the United States can be so wasteful as 
 they are and yet be so strong, but it still 
 remains true that thrift is the condition of 
 continued prosperity for the State, and 
 waste the destruction of a nation. 
 
 The laws which guide the affairs of a 
 nation create also the character of an 
 individual, and I doubt whether the 
 superstructure of any character be sound 
 which does not rest upon thrift as one 
 of its foundation stones ; for thrift is not 
 to be thought of as the mere accumula- 
 tion and investment of money, it is the 
 
90 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 evidence of certain qualities which are 
 more precious than silver and gold. 
 When you know that a family are thrifty, 
 then they may or may not be clever, 
 agreeable, good-natured, popular, but you 
 do know that they must be industrious, 
 honest, persevering, simple living. Thrift, 
 if you go into the matter, proves fore- 
 sight in the regulation of life, a steady 
 principle of action, a constant self-denial 
 in little things, and a certain willingness 
 to endure hardships. It would be a rare 
 thing indeed to find a thrifty person lazy, 
 shiftless, unreliable, irresolute. You may 
 take for granted that he will be clear 
 of head and strong of will, independent 
 of human opinion, and true to his own 
 conscience. He cannot be soft who lives 
 in this atmosphere ; he cannot be weak 
 
THRIFT 91 
 
 who has passed through this temptation ; 
 he cannot be a fool who has so often had 
 to say no. 
 
 Justice is seldom done to the thrifty, 
 and a great deal more than justice is 
 done to the thriftless. A curious glamour 
 seems to surround the man who takes 
 no thought about to-morrow in another 
 sense than Jesus intended, who flings his 
 money right and left in every form of 
 social extravagance, who is hail fellow 
 well met with every man upon a basis of 
 meat and drink, and sport and pleasure, 
 who does not deny himself anything 
 which can minister to his appetite or his 
 tastes, or which will tend to notoriety 
 and display. People call him by various 
 flattering names which all come to this 
 that he is the type of good nature ; 
 
92 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 beside him the careful and saving man is 
 counted to be niggardly, shabby, mean, 
 and self -regarding ; and with the majority 
 of people he would be discredited. But 
 the soundness of a man's heart is not to 
 be finally judged by the foolish tips with 
 which he demoralizes servants and reduces 
 them to flunkies, nor by his willingness 
 to stand the cost of champagne and 
 cigars, nor by his taste for expensive 
 articles which he does not need, nor by 
 the lavish scale on which he lives. Do 
 you find in your experience that this man 
 is as ready to give to the great causes of 
 religion, and philanthropy, and education, 
 and charity, as he is to spend his money 
 upon feasts and shows, on purple and 
 fine linen? Have you never discovered 
 in this man of overflowing geniality and 
 
THRIFT 93 
 
 reputed warmth of heart a remarkable 
 reluctance to part with his substance for 
 worthy and unselfish ends, and an amazing 
 wealth of mean excuses when he is asked ? 
 Are you not haunted with a suspicion that 
 at any moment this large-hearted man 
 may embrace your purse in his affection, 
 and this fine, open-handed fellow may 
 open his hand not to give, but to borrow ? 
 And did you ever know this capital fellow 
 to pay anything which you ever lent him ? 
 When he dies, is it not found, in nine 
 cases out of ten, that he has made no 
 proper provision for his wife and children, 
 but has wasted on himself and his boon 
 companions, or at best on his selfish habits 
 of life, the money which ought to have 
 secured for them a home and comfort ? 
 When the hat goes round for his family, 
 
94 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 are you not tempted then to revise your 
 judgment and to realize the hollowness of 
 his character? Open-handed? Yes, to 
 himself and the people that are like him. 
 Not niggardly ? No, except to those who 
 have depended on him. Give the thrifty 
 man his due ; if he be not popular with 
 the glutton and the wine bibber, he has 
 some good points. It is he, I suspect, who 
 gives the largest subscription on Hospital 
 Sunday, not your light-hearted spendthrift, 
 and it is his kind which maintains the 
 great institutions of charity. You need 
 not be afraid that he will sponge on you 
 for money he is not so mean as that ; or 
 that his widow will have to go out begging 
 he is not so shabby as that. If he 
 practises self-denials which you may de- 
 spise taking a car instead of a hansom, 
 
THRIFT 95 
 
 travelling third-class instead of first, going 
 to a quiet hotel instead of to a fashionable 
 one, drinking water instead of wine, it is 
 he himself at the worst, and not you, who 
 is going to suffer. It is not this man who 
 will impoverish society, or tax his neigh- 
 bours for the upkeep of himself and his 
 family. If he lives simply he lives surely, 
 also honestly and beneficently, and that 
 no thriftless person ever does, or ever 
 will do, while the world lasts. 
 
 It is not young men and women brought 
 up in the practice of thrift, and accustomed 
 to simple and wholesome ways of life, who 
 are afraid to marry because they cannot 
 have a large house, and surround them- 
 selves with expensive furniture, and in- 
 dulge in a hundred luxuries, and begin 
 upon the level where their father and 
 
96 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 mother have ended. Marriage in what is 
 called society is decreasing because young 
 men and women are afraid, not of poverty, 
 but of simplicity, and desire not comfort, 
 but luxury, because they have not learned 
 to save, and because they are not prepared 
 to save ; and therefore many young women 
 are growing shallow, and affected, and 
 cynical, and fast, and many young men 
 calculating, selfish, soft and vicious. Thrif t- 
 lessness therefore has its Nemesis, though 
 it seems the most venial of sins, in wasted 
 hearts, which is worse th^n wasted money ; 
 in worldly lives, which is worse than want 
 of prudence. 
 
 Thrifty people consider together their 
 ways and means, and keep their expendi- 
 ture well within their income. It is not 
 they who run into debt and have large 
 
THRIFT 97 
 
 accounts with tradesmen ; who are con- 
 tinually receiving dunning letters, and 
 have to humble themselves with false, 
 cringing excuses ; who keep poor shop- 
 keepers out of their money and hring them 
 often to bankruptcy ; who if they pay any- 
 thing will sooner pay their wine merchant 
 than their doctor, and who if they had a 
 little money at hand would rather make up 
 a party for a horse race or a theatre than 
 give it to the best cause that ever asked 
 for help. Luxurious people often carry a 
 high head, looking down on tradesfolk and 
 on their quieter neighbours ; but at any 
 rate it was the tradespeople who threatened 
 them, not they the tradespeople, and if 
 their neighbours be quiet, at least they pay 
 their debts ; and I had rather be the green- 
 grocer in my little shop who was cheated 
 
 7 
 
98 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 than the fashionable woman in her carriage 
 who cheated him. 
 
 Will people never understand that 
 whether we live simply or extravagantly, 
 whether we pay our debts at once or after 
 several years, whether we use the means 
 God has given us for selfish or noble ends, 
 is really a moral question ? The thriftless 
 nation, the thriftless family, the thriftless 
 person has broken one of the laws, both of 
 nature and of Christ, and will suffer 
 punishment in decadence of character, in 
 loss of self-respect, and in callousness of 
 honour ; while the frugal and careful 
 man is blessed to-day with peace of mind 
 and a good conscience, and the respect of 
 those neighbours who know the difference 
 between sham and reality, between truth 
 and falsehood. 
 
GRATITUDE 
 
GRATITUDE 
 
 T is pleasant to come upon 
 a cluster of Alpine flowers 
 blooming amid a waste of 
 snow, and it is with the 
 same feeling one reads 
 what the town of Jabesh-Gilead did 
 for Saul in the iron age of Jewish 
 history. It is one of the Idylls of 
 the Old Testament. The connexion be- 
 tween this place in the rough coun- 
 try beyond Jordan and the King of 
 Israel was established long before Saul 
 
 101 
 
102 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 began his ill-fated career, and is a ro- 
 mantic story. The Tribe of Benjamin 
 had so offended the rough conscience of 
 Israel by sheltering shameless criminals 
 that it was almost exterminated, and the 
 survivors were forbidden to marry into 
 other tribes. This meant that there would 
 soon be a tribe less in Israel, and the 
 heart of the nation was touched. Some 
 expedient must be found to supply Ben- 
 jamin with wives, and since Jabesh-Gilead 
 had not joined in the war, and was 
 supposed to be friendly to the offending 
 tribe, the men of Israel seized four 
 hundred young women of the place and 
 handed them over to Benjamin. The 
 women carried off in this fashion linked 
 together Benjamin and Jabesh-Gilead, and 
 a tradition of friendship was created, 
 
GRATITUDE 103 
 
 something like that which existed, through 
 marriage also, between the Scots and the 
 French. 
 
 Pass about three centuries, and Jabesh- 
 Gilead is in sore trouble. The ancient 
 enemy of their nation had attacked this 
 outlying, lonely place, and offered its 
 inhabitants the alternative of hopeless 
 resistance or a shameful humiliation. In 
 straits, they bethought themselves of their 
 hereditary kinsmen of Benjamin, and 
 sent a swift embassy to Saul, who was 
 already known as "a mighty man of 
 valour." He came to meet them like 
 another Cincinnatus from the plough, 
 and on the hearing of their story the 
 Spirit of God descended upon Saul. He 
 killed his oxen, which he would never 
 need again, and sent the fragments as a 
 
104 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 fiery cross through Israel. The heart of 
 the nation was stirred, and in a few 
 days Saul was at the head of the army 
 of Israel. He bade Jabesh-Gilead be of 
 good courage, for help was at hand, and 
 the people waited for him as the little 
 garrison of Lucknow for their deliverers. 
 Saul came and smote the Ammonites 
 with such calculated skill, that there were 
 not two of them left together. It was 
 Saul's maiden victory and a splendid feat 
 of arms, and so the old tie, rudely formed 
 long ago, was re-knit by this friendly 
 succour in time of need. 
 
 Pass some forty years now, and Saul's 
 day of trouble has come, and the gallant 
 king lies dead on the field of Gilboa. 
 The Philistines were not generous foes, 
 and Saul had been the hammer of their 
 
GRATITUDE 105 
 
 race. When they found his body, they 
 cut off his head, whom living they had 
 been afraid to meet, and hung it in the 
 Temple of Dagan ; they fastened his body 
 to the walls of Bethshan, and placed his 
 armour in the house of the Goddess of 
 the Grove. Alas for Saul ! The armies 
 of Israel were scattered, and David was 
 in hiding. Who is to remember the 
 fallen king and rescue his remains from 
 insult? There is one place where his 
 memory is green and where mothers tell 
 their children what Saul did for their 
 fathers in the brave days of old. As 
 soon as the sad news of Gilboa reached 
 distant Jabesh, her valiant men resolved 
 to do by Saul dead as he had done for 
 them living. They made a swift night 
 march to Bethshan, and brought away 
 
106 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 the bodies of Saul and his three sons. 
 They buried their ashes in a public place 
 at Jabesh, and they made great lamenta- 
 tion over the king. Saul was laid to 
 rest among the people he had saved, and 
 he had the best of all monuments the 
 people's gratitude. 
 
 It is the custom nowadays to criticize 
 the defective morality of the Old Testa- 
 ment, and nothing is easier than to make 
 comparisons to our advantage between 
 the ways of the generations past and our 
 own. How fierce and revengeful, how 
 callous and brutal were the heroes of 
 Hebrew history in the fighting period ! 
 And so the modern, with his dainty senti- 
 ment and effusive philanthropy, is inclined 
 to treat those hard-fisted fighters as 
 savages ; but he forgets the age they 
 
GRATITUDE 107 
 
 lived in and the work they had to do. 
 Without doubt painting is a more delicate 
 art than hewing, but until the stone be 
 quarried and cut there will be no walls 
 to paint, and the men of the former 
 days blasted the stone with sweat and 
 danger and laid the strong foundation 
 of the Kingdom of Righteousness. It is 
 easy for us at a later stage to decorate 
 the rough-hewn walls which Ironsides 
 built sword in hand, and to add the 
 tenderer graces of Christianity to their 
 more austere virtues. Are we certain 
 that while we have gained we have not 
 also lost, and that while we despise the 
 past for its rudeness we have not allowed 
 some of its strength to stay? There are 
 virtues which belong to a golden age 
 and are hardly possible in the age of 
 
108 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 iron, and such are mercy and charity. 
 Let us put those achievements of ad- 
 vanced civilization to our credit, but let 
 us remember that the history of morals 
 is not one of unbroken progress. The 
 simpler times had their own virtues, 
 which have not always been carried 
 forward, and do not always take kindly 
 to our climate. There are extinct animals 
 and there are extinct arts. If we do 
 not give heed in our softer days, there 
 may come to be extinct virtues ; and one 
 that is in danger of starvation amid the 
 complacence and toleration of modern 
 life is gratitude. 
 
 It was this way in the old days, to which 
 we may transport ourselves at a time for 
 change of air. If any one had done you 
 or yours a bad turn with malicious inten- 
 
GRATITUDE 109 
 
 tions, then you did not pretend to forget 
 his injurious deed, but rather made it a 
 matter of conscience to remember it. You 
 followed your enemy with unwearied 
 hatred, and when the opportunity came 
 you paid him back with interest for what 
 he had done unto you. If, on the other 
 hand, any one helped you or yours in a 
 strait of life, then were you bound to him 
 with hooks of steel. You gave him the 
 loyalty of your heart, and were ready at 
 any time to stand by his side, and if God 
 in His mercy afforded you the chance, you 
 rewarded this man an hundredfold for the 
 kindness which he had shown unto you 
 or to your father. The history of Israel 
 abounds with instances of traditional 
 hatred, such as the vendetta against the 
 Amalekites, whom the Jews slew without 
 
110 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 mercy, because the Amalekites had fallen 
 on their fathers as they went up from 
 Egypt to the land of Canaan ; such as the 
 friendship to the Kenites, who must be 
 spared because they guided the children of 
 Israel on their march through the wilder- 
 ness. What was done on the larger scale 
 of national life has also been seen in many 
 a transmitted feud and many a bequeathed 
 debt of private life. Some may be living 
 who can recall the day when people hated 
 their enemies and loved their friends 
 after the good old fashion, and perhaps 
 they are inclined to thank God that a 
 better state of feeling now obtains, and 
 that we do not live in a state of perpetual 
 feud. Certainly we ought to be thankful 
 for every decrease in malice, bitterness, 
 and revenge, and for the spread of a 
 
GRATITUDE 111 
 
 kindly and forgiving temper. We must 
 not, however, plume ourselves too much 
 upon our charity, nor use that fine word 
 " forgiveness " too loosely. If a woman is 
 willing to pocket any past affront to gain 
 an ignoble entrance into a higher social 
 circle, and will accept an invitation from 
 those who once insulted her, or if a 
 merchant will do business greedily for the 
 sake of a hundred pounds with a firm 
 which did their best to ruin him in some 
 crisis of trade, do not let us ascribe this 
 poor spirit to the influence of Christ's 
 Cross, nor count this meanness any 
 improvement on the Judges who washed 
 out their wrongs in blood and did not 
 sell their forgiveness for a dinner or a 
 purse of gold. It is cant to say that the 
 average man of the world is more 
 
112 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 merciful than our uncompromising fore- 
 fathers ; he is more cautious, more politic, 
 more worldly, more cowardly. Besides, 
 we can never get rid of a vice without 
 the risk of weakening its corresponding 
 virtue. Granted, if you please, that we 
 are less vindictive ; will any one say that 
 we are as grateful ? Do parents inculcate 
 the quality of gratitude upon their 
 children as one of the leading obligations 
 of life? Are masters and servants bound 
 together to-day by this ancient tie ? 
 Does our popular literature exalt this 
 duty as did the Hebrew writers? Has 
 not the worst cynicism of modern times 
 been distilled into that proverb which is 
 so often heard, " Gratitude is a lively 
 sense of favours to come " ? Can any one 
 deny that the sense of debt to those who 
 
GRATITUDE 113 
 
 have rendered service either to our people 
 or ourselves has weakened? Has it not 
 come to this, that in the past men hated 
 their enemies and loved their friends, but 
 now we forgive our enemies and forget 
 our friends? 
 
 There are three persons short of the 
 Highest who have established upon each 
 one of us an unanswerable claim of 
 gratitude, and one too often forgotten is 
 the public servant of the State. If any 
 one surrenders his favourite tastes and 
 sacrifices his time and devotes his talents 
 to do for us, either in the Parliament of 
 the city or of the realm, what must be 
 done, yet what we cannot do for our- 
 selves, are not we that man's debtor ? Is 
 it right to sit upon this man like a jury 
 upon a criminal, to oppose the best thing 
 
 8 
 
114 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 he wishes to do, because he does not 
 belong to our party, though we be all of 
 the same State, to embitter his life with 
 insinuations, denunciations, and gibes, and 
 to forget in some hour of popular dis- 
 favour his long, patient, faithful services? 
 It is natural that people should have 
 their political leaning ; it is base that 
 they should not vie in gratitude to every 
 man, patrician or plebeian, who has done 
 well by the Commonwealth, and who 
 seeks no other reward than the approval 
 of his conscience and the approbation of 
 his fellow-citizens. 
 
 The second person can easily be found 
 in any society, and perhaps most easily 
 in a commercial city. You began life 
 let me put the case poor and lonely, 
 with no help save God's and the friend 
 
GRATITUDE 115 
 
 whom He gave you. This man took you 
 by the hand, and aided you with advice, 
 introductions, business, and private kind- 
 ness. It is an old story now, and the 
 wheel of fortune has revolved, so that 
 you who were poor are rich, and the 
 one who was rich died poor. God has 
 given to you the opportunity of showing 
 the stuff of which your heart is made, 
 and of tasting the sweetest pleasure 
 within human reach doing good to 
 them who have done good to us. What 
 care have you had of your benefactor's 
 widow ? What service have you rendered 
 to his son ? Have you been to them 
 what their father was to you ? Shame 
 on the ingrate who could forget the 
 friends of early days, or deny his debt 
 of obligation ! Shame on the woman 
 
116 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 who casts off her old neighbours because 
 she has got among richer people and 
 stands a few inches higher in the social 
 scale. There are none so true as the 
 friends of our adversity, none so fickle 
 as the friends of our prosperity. 
 
 And the third person to whom you 
 owe more than you can ever pay or ever 
 imagine, is your mother. She endured 
 more for you, served you more patiently, 
 loved you more fondly, thought of you 
 more constantly, and hoped for you more 
 bravely, than any other person you have 
 known on earth, or ever will know save 
 your wife (or your husband), if indeed 
 they can always be excepted. If your 
 mother be spared to you, then are you 
 bound to make her a first charge on your 
 life as you desire a peaceful conscience 
 
GRATITUDE 117 
 
 and as you shall answer before the Judg- 
 ment Seat of God. She must be encom- 
 passed with every observance of comfort, 
 and honour, and gentleness, and love. 
 With sacrifices also, if so be it will please 
 her, of tastes, and occupation, and time, 
 and even friendships, and after you have 
 done all that you can think of and any 
 one can suggest, you will still remain a 
 hopeless bankrupt, for the love where- 
 with she loved you. If she has passed 
 from this life, and is now with God, then 
 keep the commandments which she laid 
 upon you in your youth, though now you 
 be a grey-headed man, and follow in 
 her steps, even as she followed Christ. 
 Honour all women and serve them in 
 purity and chivalry for her sake, and 
 may your tongue cleave to the roof of 
 
118 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 your mouth and your right hand lose its 
 cunning, may your name be blotted from 
 the Lamb's Book of Life, and your por- 
 tion be taken from among the inheri- 
 tance of the saints, if while she is living 
 you sin against your mother, or if she 
 be dead you forget her love. 
 
REVERENCE 
 
VI 
 REVERENCE 
 
 R, BUCKLE, in that brilli- 
 ant fragment of literature, 
 The History of Civiliza- 
 tion, has, no doubt, fallen 
 into the vice of generaliza- 
 tion, and is too apt to dazzle his readers 
 by plausible conclusions; but he has sense 
 upon his side in pointing out the in- 
 fluence of climate on the character of 
 nations. It would be too much to say 
 that to know a people's physical environ- 
 ment is to infer their religious creed, 
 
 121 
 
122 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 for you would be hampered by an em- 
 barrassing wealth of exceptions, and yet 
 the complexion of creeds has not been 
 unaffected by scenery. Within the 
 Catholic Church the worship of the 
 Madonna has risen to its height in 
 Europe with the degrees of the thermo- 
 meter, being most reserved amid the 
 northern Germans, most exuberant among 
 the southern Italians. In no circum- 
 stance is it likely that the inhabitants 
 of the steaming valley of the Nile could 
 have as stern a faith as the lonely 
 inhabitants of the veldt. Nor could one 
 expect the same outlook upon religion 
 from a Scots Highlander, living at the 
 foot of hills along which the mists are 
 moving, and on the edge of a melancholy 
 ocean, as from an Italian, whose house 
 
REVERENCE 123 
 
 is set in an orange grove, where a blue, 
 tideless sea breaks on the beach with 
 gentle murmur. It is almost inevitable 
 that the inhabitants of a soft climate 
 should be touched with the spirit of 
 joyful confidence and those of colder 
 skies should develop a certain austerity 
 of faith. 
 
 One may avail himself of Mr. Buckle's 
 idea, and suggest that the religious 
 climate changes with the generations, 
 and has more bracing and more relaxing 
 zones. It goes without saying that while 
 faith in its essence must ever be the 
 same, the particular standpoint of our 
 fathers is not that of their children. 
 They dwelt upon the depravity of human 
 
 nature, the horror of sin, the holiness of 
 
 % 
 
 God, the helplessness of the soul, the 
 
124 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 sovereignty of the Divine Mercy, and the 
 unsearchable purpose of the Divine Will, 
 themes full of awe and majesty. There- 
 fore did they humble themselves before 
 God and cast their souls upon His pity. 
 They sought anxiously for a ground of 
 pardon, and searched themselves for signs 
 of the Divine calling. They dared not 
 boast of His favour, but they walked 
 humbly before Him and hoped for His 
 salvation. Theirs was an inward, in- 
 tense, and lowly religion. We are in- 
 clined to dwell on the possibilities of 
 human nature, the wide hope of the 
 Incarnation, the revelation of the Divine 
 Fatherhood, the compass of God's love, 
 the full assurance of faith, the joy of 
 the present life, and the glory of the 
 life to come. Our religion is, there- 
 
EEVERENCE 125 
 
 fore, more outspoken, unfettered, high- 
 spirited. About the saint of the former 
 day it was written, " he feared God " ; 
 but of our good man you read in his 
 biography that he was a " bright " or a 
 "happy" Christian. 
 
 It is futile to recall days which are 
 gone, or to reproduce their moods, for 
 the time spirit bloweth where it listeth, 
 and, rightly used, it is the spirit of God. 
 We have cause to be thankful, because 
 we have learned not to despair of our 
 race, to think of our fellow men as 
 brethren, and to remember that a man 
 has more to do in this world than save 
 his own soul. Our religion is less mor- 
 bid, gloomy, introspective, and selfish ; 
 but there are times when, looking out 
 through the palms upon this expanse of 
 
126 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 blue, one wearies for the strong salt air 
 of the Atlantic and the grandeur of the 
 hills when the sun shines through the 
 mist. One is haunted with the convic- 
 tion that if in our day we have gained 
 joy and charity, we have lost in devout- 
 ness and humility, and that we have 
 almost bidden good-bye to reverence. 
 
 Religious problems were once discussed 
 with impressive seriousness by men who 
 were standing in the holy place and speak- 
 ing in the presence of the Most High. We 
 prefer to discuss them in fiction, which 
 . Seems sometimes to have no restraint and 
 sometimes no decency, in the pages of 
 enterprising serials, in clever dinner-talk 
 over the walnuts and the wine. Once men 
 prayed to God, as Abraham did for Sodom, 
 with chastened voice, and humbled them- 
 
REVERENCE 127 
 
 selves before Him, like Isaiah in the holy 
 place, and waited for Him as those that 
 watch for the morning. Then the name 
 of God was seldom used, and the soul was 
 a sanctuary, into which none but its Maker 
 had a right to enter, and religion might 
 not be lightly handled in common talk. 
 Religious people of to-day, in proportion 
 to their fervour, allow themselves to shout 
 the name of the Almighty without any 
 term of adoration, to paddle among the 
 sacred affairs of the soul with rude, in- 
 trusive hands, to introduce the Son of God 
 into the squalid situations of common life, 
 and to make allusions of ghastly famili- 
 arity to the Third Person of the Holy 
 Trinity. It seems as if the curtain were 
 being torn down from the holiest of all, 
 and the place, where the glory of God rests 
 
128 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 in human life, turned into a common 
 street. 
 
 Can we wonder if religion has lost the 
 saving sense of reverence ? that its influ- 
 ence upon the people is failing? that the 
 public worship of God is decreasing in 
 every land, and that even if a crowd 
 gather to hear a sermon, they will not 
 come to pray ? that the day of rest which 
 God has given unto men, when once a 
 week at least men may have quietness 
 wherein to examine their souls and bring 
 them into touch with the things which are 
 unseen, is being crowded with business and 
 pleasure ? that the head of the household 
 no longer builds his altar unto God, and 
 gathers his family round it as they journey 
 through this world to that which is to 
 come ? that the spirit of prayer, by which 
 
REVERENCE 129 
 
 the human soul is bound by golden chains 
 unto the feet of God, is dying out from 
 amongst us ? that with every year a lower 
 view is taken of the mystery of marriage, 
 and fewer people seek the blessing of God 
 upon that sacred act, which they are 
 coming to regard as nothing but a civil 
 contract ? and, which is not the least 
 calamity, that the bonds of filial piety are 
 being loosed before our eyes, so that 
 parents are ceasing to use their authority 
 as the vice-gerents of God, and children do 
 not pretend to render that becoming obedi- 
 ence which is one of the beauties of youth ? 
 What strikes one trying to gauge the 
 spirit of the day is an appalling want of 
 gravity. Not only young or silly people, 
 but almost every person is infected with a 
 spirit of intellectual frivolity. Books have 
 
 9 
 
130 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 had to give the second place to magazines, 
 and serials themselves are being swamped 
 by the most trifling papers. The drama 
 has abandoned the nobler themes, both of 
 instructive comedy and wholesome tragedy, 
 and can find no other subject than the 
 degradation of pure love and the ridicule 
 of the marriage state. No subject, either 
 social or political, is thought out with care 
 and conscience till its principles be dis- 
 covered, but is rather turned into a popu- 
 lar catchword or a mercenary appeal. 
 And the mind of the people, untrained by 
 thinking, and unwilling to listen to any- 
 thing except clever, cheap, sophistical talk, 
 is carried away now in one direction, now 
 in another, and expends itself in gusty 
 moods of unreasoning rage or ignoble 
 enthusiasm. 
 
REVERENCE 131 
 
 Without reverence for the Eternal veri- 
 ties, many calamities must befall a people. 
 And certainly without this fear no man 
 can do lasting work. Mr. Stopford Brooke, 
 in his admirable monograph on Tennyson 
 itself one of the most beautiful pieces of 
 literary work of recent years insists that 
 one of the conditions of Tennyson's 
 eminence was his reverence. He was 
 impressed by the greatness of his Art, and 
 could not do anything slightly or un- 
 worthily. The masters of physical science, 
 as distinguished from its second-rate com- 
 pilers, have been animated with the same 
 austere spirit taking the shoes from off 
 their feet before their burning bush, the 
 mysterious and irresistible powers of 
 Nature. He who is pert and forward, 
 puffed up with slight attainments and un- 
 
132 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 awed by the vastness of knowledge, will 
 never come to any perfection nor be 
 admitted into the secret place of wisdom. 
 It is the student who stands before the 
 house of knowledge, modest, patient, 
 single-minded, conscious only of his own 
 poverty and the unspeakable riches within, 
 to whom Wisdom will open her gates, and 
 on whom she will bestow her hidden 
 treasures. 
 
 " Make knowledge circle with the winds, 
 But let her herald reverence fly 
 Before her to whatever sky 
 Bear seed of men and growth of minds." 
 
 Reverence is also one of the sure founda- 
 tions of character, for without it one may 
 indeed have many glittering and superficial 
 traits of cleverness and ingenuity, of bright 
 emotion and restless energy, but he cannot 
 
REVERENCE 133 
 
 have illumination of conscience, dignity of 
 soul, sincerity of mind, and the highest 
 purity of life. Nor is it likely that one can 
 obtain the gracious qualities of sympathy, 
 charity, and sacrifice. It is only as the 
 soul is bowed before the things which are 
 lovely that it will carry itself both bravely 
 and tenderly. Do we realize how poorly 
 we sometimes show besides the type of 
 former days ? " Benevolence," says one 
 well able to speak, " uprightness, enter- 
 prise, intellectual honesty, a love of free- 
 dom and a hatred of superstition are grow- 
 ing around us ; but we look in vain for 
 that most beautiful character of the past, 
 so distrustful of self, so trustful of others, 
 so simple, so modest, so devout, which even 
 when, Ixion-like, it bestowed its affections 
 on a cloud, made its very illusions the 
 
134 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 source of some of the purest virtues of our 
 nature." 
 
 And reverence lies at the root of right 
 living, for one of the first principles of 
 conduct is obedience. If we do not learn 
 when young the habit of respect, to 
 honour our father and our mother, to obey 
 those set over us without questioning or 
 grudging, to give precedence to age, both 
 in our speaking and our doing, to admit 
 the sacred claim of suffering and affliction, 
 and to bow ourselves before the highest 
 rank on earth, the splendour of moral 
 goodness, then for us no perfection of soul 
 will ever be possible. For us there is likely 
 in the future many a squalid defeat, and 
 perhaps some irrevocable moral catas- 
 trophe. The irreverence of youth grows 
 into the profanity and rebellion of later 
 
REVERENCE 135 
 
 years, and is the parent of anarchy, both 
 in the family and in the State. "It is," 
 says Ruskin, " his restraint which is 
 honourable to man, not his liberty. . . . 
 From the ministering of the Archangel to 
 the labour of the insect, from the poising 
 of the planets to the gravitation of a grain 
 of dust, the power and glory of all creatures, 
 and all matter, consist in their obedience, 
 not in their freedom. The sun has no 
 liberty a dead leaf has much. The dust 
 of which you are formed has no liberty. 
 Its liberty will come with its corruption. 
 
 " And, therefore, I say boldly, though it 
 seems a strange thing to say in England, 
 that as the first power of a nation consists 
 in knowing how to guide the Plough, its 
 second power consists in knowing how to 
 wear the Fetter." 
 
MORAL COURAGE 
 
VII 
 
 MORAL COURAGE 
 
 ** 
 
 ORAL courage is obeying 
 one's conscience, and doing 
 what one believes to be 
 right in face of a hos- 
 tile majority ; and moral 
 
 cowardice is stifling one's conscience, and 
 
 / 'd&\ _) 
 doing what is less than right to win other 
 
 people's favour. It is a calamity both in 
 Church and State that this high-spirited 
 virtue is not more common, and that op- 
 
 , Ci n -ft 
 
 portunism is so general. Men are wanted 
 everywhere with the courage of their con- 
 
 139 
 
140 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 victions, who will not trim their sails to 
 every popular gale, nor change their creed 
 at any one's bidding, hut will follow con- 
 science through fire and water. Such 
 stalwarts of principle like St. Paul telling 
 the Corinthians that their judgment was a 
 very small thing to him ; like Athanasius 
 standing alone against the world ; like 
 Luther declaring " I can do no other 
 wise " ; like John Knox steeling himself 
 before the tears of a Queen, are rare in 
 human society. What haunts one in 
 political speeches is the idea that the 
 speaker is not declaring the best thing he 
 knows, but is tickling the ears of the 
 groundlings. What pains one in many a 
 sermon is the suspicion that the preacher 
 must know more than he says, and that he 
 has tuned his voice to the prejudices of 
 
MORAL COURAGE 141 
 
 his people. What weakens the power of 
 the press that fine instrument for popular 
 education is the certainty that its leader- 
 writers are perfectly aware of the ability 
 and honesty of the other side, but argue as 
 if they were fools or knaves in order to 
 please their party, and the moral power of 
 society is reduced by the large number 
 of people who hold their consciences 
 in subjection to social expediency. Your 
 neighbour may have convictions which 
 he has purchased with the blood of his 
 heart, and for which, on due occasion, he 
 would be ready to suffer, but you cannot 
 be sure of the fact if it happens that his 
 opinions are always those of the majority. 
 As far as you can see he maintains an 
 attitude of guarded neutrality, till it appears 
 on what side the majority lies, and then 
 
142 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 their opinion turns out to be what he has 
 always held ; but if that majority should 
 dwindle into a minority, your neighbour 
 has a mind open to education. How many 
 of one's acquaintances have grit enough to 
 form a conviction on a matter of right, and 
 to defend righteousness when unrighteous- 
 ness is popular ? One in six is as many as 
 could be expected, but it is not necessary 
 to impute wilful dishonesty to the other 
 five, or to suggest that they have outraged 
 their conscience. They have simply trained 
 their conscience to calculate by numbers, 
 and to identify righteousness with the 
 majority vote. They would not have hated 
 Christ in the year thirty-three, but they 
 would never have crossed the rabble which 
 yelped for His crucifixion. They are not 
 bad people, they may be good-natured and 
 
MOEAL COURAGE 143 
 
 well-meaning people they are simply with- 
 out backbone moral cowards ! 
 
 Suppose, to make a study in moral 
 cowardice, your friend has agreed with you 
 in the morning to follow a certain line of 
 action, because it is right, and there is not 
 much difference among intelligent men 
 about righteousness. An hour afterwards 
 he meets A, who has a biting tongue, and 
 ridicules your action. B, who is a very 
 rich man, says a little later that he at least 
 will have nothing to do with it. Later 
 still C declares that it will be very unpopu- 
 lar, and hour by hour various letters of the 
 alphabet attack, disown, and condemn 
 what you intended to do. None of the 
 letters represent much conscience, and 
 none of the arguments touch the moral 
 question, but they have the cumulative 
 
144 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 effect of suggesting to your friend that if 
 he does this thing he will be made 
 uncomfortable. His resolution crumbles 
 away before this flood, and in the evening 
 the fashion of his countenance has altered. 
 On thinking over the matter, he now sees 
 some difficulty, and feels that it would be 
 well to wait a little. You remind him that 
 this is not a matter of expediency, but of 
 justice. " Quite so," he says, " no doubt, 
 but " and he hesitates. You know then 
 that he has been sending up kites all day 
 to see how the wind is blowing, and that 
 he has no mind to go in its teeth. It is a 
 collapse of conscience, and your friend does 
 not propose to cast in his lot with a 
 minority of one. He shambles off inwardly 
 ashamed, but he will not face that com- 
 bination of letters. Germans in the middle 
 
MORAL COUKAGE 145 
 
 ages were terrified by a mysterious institu- 
 tion called the Vehm-Gerichte, which 
 veiled itself in mystery, and administered 
 a rude justice to wrong-doers. People's 
 imagination was appalled at the thought 
 of a body which surrounded them on every 
 side, and took notice of their smallest 
 action. The Vehm-Gerichte of our time is 
 opinion, which by its potent and intangible 
 influence holds most people in bondage. 
 In the Church it is called orthodoxy (or it 
 may be heterodoxy) ; in politics, party ; in 
 society, fashion ; in trade, custom. Its 
 authority lies in combination and im- 
 personality. Our fellow men, taken one 
 by one, are not very impressive personages, 
 neither much wiser nor much better than 
 ourselves, but let them slip on the mask 
 and mount the judgment seat, with this 
 
 10 
 
146 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 sanction, "people say," and the average 
 person makes an abject surrender. 
 
 Moral courage has four degrees, and the 
 first is not to be afraid of your opponents. 
 This is really no great attainment, for he 
 
 does not deserve the name of man who can 
 
 / 
 
 be browbeaten by scolding or threatening. 
 Insolence of this sort is not unwelcome, 
 for it stiffens resolution and rouses pride, 
 and delivers one from the snare of com- 
 promise, and sets one with his back to the 
 wall. If one is to be tried, let him pray 
 for an unscrupulous and venomous antago- 
 nist. It is a higher degree of courage not 
 to fear your friends. Hundreds who are 
 as strong as a rock to resist those who hate 
 them are as weak as water in the hands of 
 those who love them. Oh, the sorrow of 
 it that we should be tempted to do some- 
 
MORAL COURAGE 147 
 
 thing less than what is right by those 
 whom we trust, and hindered from doing 
 the highest thing we know by those who 
 love us most. Many a woman shrinks 
 from duty for fear of her husband the 
 amazement on his face ; many a husband 
 falls beneath himself for fear of his wife 
 the amazement on her face. So they who 
 have stolen our hearts sometimes also steal 
 our courage. He is braver still who does 
 not fear the Cross of Christ ; who has no 
 secret clauses in his treaty with Christ 
 about truth or duty ; who puts no personal 
 inclinations, no family ties, no class 
 customs, no business profit above Christ, 
 who will follow anywhere when Christ 
 leads, and do anything that Christ com- 
 mands. But the highest courage of all is 
 not to be afraid about one's self. Is there 
 
148 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 any more admirable instance of manliness 
 than St. Augustine's searching out the 
 mistakes in his writings, and recanting 
 them before he died, for there is nothing 
 we are more concerned about than our 
 reputation, nothing we are more unwilling 
 to do than to confess that we were wrong. 
 When any one is brave enough to unsay 
 the worse for the better, then surely he 
 is a true man, and will stand fast for 
 righteousness. 
 
 Certain people have special need of 
 moral courage, and one is a young man in 
 the city. His safest plan is to bid good-bye 
 to compromise, and not to burden himself 
 with an excess of courtesy in the hour of 
 temptation. A tempter is most quickly 
 daunted when he is most roughly handled. 
 Have nothing to do under any excuse with 
 
MORAL COURAGE 149 
 
 drinking men, is sound advice ; allow no 
 fool to blaspheme religion in your hearing ; 
 come down upon the beast who tells an evil 
 story ; cast your shield over the weak com- 
 rade who is ready to fall. There are times 
 when a hot temper and a sharp tongue are 
 good servants to the Kingdom of God, and 
 when war to the death is the wisest policy. 
 The second person is a woman in society, 
 for women are apt sometimes to be sad 
 cowards. They are afraid to dress as their 
 best friends would like to see them, because 
 it would be unfashionable ; afraid to give 
 simple dinners, because their neighbours 
 are extravagant ; afraid to allow their 
 daughters to work for themselves, because 
 it might lower their station ; afraid to give 
 a children's party without wine, because 
 they might be thought stingy ; afraid to 
 
150 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 have their poor relations in the house, 
 because of the servants ; afraid to be 
 economical, because of the same critics. 
 They are in bondage to all kinds of people, 
 from their rich neighbour to their house- 
 maid. One wonders that some woman 
 does not pluck up courage and say, " I 
 don't care what people may think, I am 
 going to do what I judge to be right." If 
 she only dared, that woman would find a 
 dozen in her circle to follow in her steps, 
 and her courage would reinforce the moral 
 capital of a district. And a third person is 
 the member of a poor Communion, who 
 needs courage that he may not deny his 
 faith. If any Christian discovers that his 
 soul will be better cared for in another 
 than the church of his nativity, then let 
 him emigrate at once, for religion is more 
 
MORAL COURAGE 151 
 
 than churches. But for a man to desert 
 the church in which he was bred for no 
 other reason than that another is more 
 fashionable, is being ashamed of your 
 mother because you have risen in life, and 
 comes very near to the sin of Judas 
 Iscariot. It reveals a character of soul 
 unfit for Christ's kingdom, and this mean 
 spirit, if it spread, would poison religion in 
 its life-blood. Such treachery inflicts a 
 double injury, embittering the church the 
 coward leaves with a sense of wrong, and 
 infecting the church he joins with a sus- 
 picion of worldliness. Every man ought 
 to make conscience of his faith, and he who 
 is true to his church, although the sun be 
 not shining upon her, even unto the loss 
 of position and goods, has given the surest 
 pledge that he will be faithful to his Lord 
 
152 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 and be a good citizen of the Common- 
 wealth. 
 
 The vindication of moral courage is in 
 the judgment of God, and when any one 
 stands alone for conscience' sake, we do 
 not well to be angry with him, and we 
 must not be found fighting against him. 
 If his conscience be overscrupulous, then 
 let us see that we deal gently with him 
 and give him more light rendering 
 thanks to God that the man has so 
 much conscience, and remembering that 
 no community can have too much among 
 its members. If the man's conscience be 
 sound, then as we would not war against 
 God Himself, let us be careful not to in- 
 jure this witness. He may be a reformer 
 before the Reformation, running like John 
 the Baptist to make the way for Christ ; 
 
MORAL COURAGE 153 
 
 he may be a trustee, holding a moral 
 heritage for our children ; he may be a 
 sentry, keeping watch where the enemy 
 will creep in the darkness. It matters 
 nothing that power and numbers, as well 
 as the voice of the mob, are against this 
 man. Their verdict is neither infallible 
 nor final ; St. Paul has the better of 
 Felix now, and Luther of the Diet of 
 Worms. What do they think of this 
 solitary man yonder whence they can 
 look down and see this world 
 
 "Spin like a fretful midge"? 
 What if the principalities and powers of 
 God, if the great cloud of witnesses, and 
 the multitude no man can number, are 
 with this lonely confessor ? He dared 
 to say "right," and his poor voice is 
 drowned for the moment by the clamour 
 
154 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 of the world ; but let no one think it has 
 been silenced, or is ever going to be 
 silenced. His word proceeds upon its 
 journey through the illimitable reaches 
 of space ; it gathers force as it goes, 
 where the brawling of foolish men has 
 long died away ; it is echoed from one 
 world after another as it passes, and at 
 last reverberates from the Throne of the 
 Most High, like the sound of many 
 waters. This is the Magna Charta of 
 moral freedom ; here is a ground where 
 the weakest may stand alone. We are 
 not the subjects of some petty province, 
 we are the citizens of a greater Rome. 
 If Jewish courts denied St. Paul his 
 rights, or Roman judges forgot justice, 
 then he had his own proud resort : " I 
 appeal unto Caesar," and once those words 
 
MORAL COURAGE 155 
 
 had passed his lips none dare do him 
 hurt. It was to Caesar he had appealed 
 and to Caesar he must go. So from the 
 petty customs and passing opinions of 
 this world the righteous man makes his 
 appeal to the Judge of all, and if God 
 shall justify him, it is a small matter 
 although the whole world has condemned 
 him. 
 
COURTESY 
 
VIII 
 COURTESY 
 
 HEN Matthew Arnold was 
 preaching culture to the 
 Philistine multitude with 
 all the zeal of a mission- 
 ary and some of his in- 
 evitable narrowness, he used to com- 
 plain that people imagined culture to 
 be simply some slight smattering of 
 Greek and Latin. And when one pleads 
 for courtesy, one is afraid that people 
 may suppose that he is simply meaning 
 manners. Mere manners are a code of 
 
 159 
 
160 HOMELY VIETUES 
 
 etiquette which varies in different coun- 
 tries and with different ages, so that 
 what is rude in France may be usual 
 in England, and what we consider fool- 
 ishness in the West may be the custom 
 of the East. They constitute a body of 
 rules which condescend upon the most 
 trivial affairs how it becomes us to eat 
 and drink, to dress and carry ourselves, 
 to speak to persons of another rank, 
 and to perform public functions. With 
 this sum of minute and varying regula- 
 tions the teacher of religion has nothing 
 to do, because it has no ethical value, 
 and may be safely left to those remark- 
 able books in which an immortal being 
 is instructed how rightly to address a 
 letter to a baronet, or how he ought to 
 use a finger glass at dinner. All the 
 
COURTESY 161 
 
 same, it is foolish to flout the customs 
 of society, for they are intended upon 
 the whole to make life more agree- 
 able, and to compel a rude person to 
 observe decency of demeanour ; but a 
 vast distinction must be drawn between 
 manners, which have to do with form, 
 and that which lies behind manners 
 and is infinitely more serious courtesy. 
 One has known many people whose 
 manners, through the disadvantage of 
 early days, or through a certain desul- 
 toriness of nature, were open to fre- 
 quent criticism, and yet he has loved 
 them for their goodness. One has also 
 known people who acquitted themselves 
 perfectly in every situation of social life, 
 but who were treacherous, cruel, selfish, 
 and evil-living. Certainly manners in 
 
 11 
 
162 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 the common sense do not make the 
 man, for Charles IE had an almost 
 irresistible charm of personal address, and 
 George IV was called the first gentle- 
 man in Europe, while I fancy there 
 have been many prophets and apostles 
 who would have come to grief amid 
 the ways of a court. Are we not in 
 danger of being biassed in our judg- 
 ment of our neighbour by his outward 
 carriage, and have we not done great 
 injustice, both by allowing ourselves to 
 be attracted by really bad men, who 
 are witty and graceful, and to be re- 
 pelled by really good men, because they 
 happen to have neither tact nor humour ? 
 It is by the soul and not by any trick 
 of speech that we ought to estimate 
 our fellow man, and he who fears God 
 
COURTESY 163 
 
 and loves his brother demands honour 
 at our hands. 
 
 We may, however, be gravely concerned 
 that manners in our day seem to be 
 decaying, because there is reason to 
 suspect that the cause is moral quite as 
 much as social. We allow ourselves to 
 treat our parents as our equals, to talk 
 in public on unpleasant subjects, to argue 
 with women beyond the point of due 
 deference, to introduce politics and religion 
 in general conversation, to bawl and 
 shout, and generally to be loud in what 
 we say and do. This is understood to 
 show the liberty of modern life, when 
 old-fashioned scruples and pedantic dignity 
 have disappeared, and everybody has been 
 emancipated children from respect to 
 their parents, youth from veneration 
 
164 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 towards old age, men from chivalry 
 towards women, and a man from the 
 very respect of himself. Life is supposed 
 to be brighter and more piquant, but 
 yet with all the excellences which are 
 assigned to the new man, and the new 
 woman, and the new child (who is often 
 the most offensive of the three), one 
 may be pardoned a backward look of 
 wistful regret to the gentleman of the 
 olden time. Perhaps he was a trifle 
 formal and tedious, but how admirable 
 in his urbanity of speech, his service of 
 women, his subordination to superiors, 
 his graciousness to inferiors, and his 
 unobtrusive reserve about the sanctities 
 of life ; and one remembers the lady 
 of the olden times, so soft of voice, so 
 winsome with her gracious ways, so per- 
 
COURTESY 165 
 
 suasive of purity by her very face, so 
 inspiring unto every noble deed by her 
 very presence, who did not lift up her 
 voice nor cause it to be heard in the 
 street. 
 
 It is not wise as a rule to make com- 
 parisons between classes, but I am inclined 
 to think that if it comes to the spirit 
 of courtesy, which lies behind all manners, 
 respectable working people, say our 
 artisans and their wives, will make a 
 better show than their masters and their 
 wives. They will be less concerned about 
 their own dignity which is always a 
 sign of vulgarity ; they will have more 
 regard to the claims of other people ; 
 they will be more anxious not to hurt 
 another's feelings, and they will be quicker 
 to render services in the little exigencies 
 
166 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 of life ; and all this is the fruit of courtesy. 
 Were any woman (and I count this a 
 perfect test) travelling with a young 
 child and some articles of luggage, it 
 would be better for her as a rule to 
 take a place in a third-class rather than 
 in a first-class carriage. The chances are 
 that the richer people unless they 
 gathered from something she said or 
 from her name upon a dressing-case that 
 she was a person of distinction, in which 
 case they would take any trouble in 
 exact proportion to their own meanness 
 would eye her with displeasure, convey 
 to her that the child was a nuisance, 
 ignore the struggle with her luggage, 
 and make her glad to leave the com- 
 partment. Were she to travel with an 
 artisan and his wife, they would bid her 
 
COURTESY 167 
 
 welcome, and make her feel at home, 
 and anticipate her wants and encompass 
 her with observances, because she was 
 a lonely woman with a child. And the 
 service of a woman and a child is more 
 than manners it is the climax of 
 courtesy. 
 
 Courtesy is really doing unto others 
 as you would be done unto, and the 
 heart of it lies in a careful consideration 
 for the feelings of other people. It comes 
 from putting one's self in his neighbour's 
 place, and trying to enter into his mind, 
 and it demands a certain suppression of 
 one's self, and a certain delicate sympathy 
 with one's neighbour. So far as our 
 abounding egotism reigns, we are bound 
 to be discourteous, because we shall be 
 so blindly immersed in our own affairs 
 
168 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 that we cannot even see the things of 
 others. So far as we break the bonds 
 of self and project ourselves into the life 
 of our brother man, we are bound to 
 be courteous, because we shall now be 
 interested in what is dear to him. This 
 man also has a family and a business; 
 this man also has had sicknesses and 
 trials. Imagine ! We must not therefore 
 talk without ceasing about our children, 
 our interests, our afflictions, our life. This 
 man also has a church, and a creed, 
 and opinions of his own, and a history. 
 Remarkable ! We must not, therefore, 
 assume that our kind of religion, and 
 our traditional views, and our favourite 
 notions, and our particular set make the 
 whole round world. This man beside us 
 also has a hard fight with an unfavouring 
 
COURTESY 169 
 
 world, with strong temptations, with 
 doubts and fears, with wounds of the 
 past which have skinned over, but which 
 smart when they are touched. It is a 
 fact, however surprising. And when this 
 occurs to us we are moved to deal kindly 
 with him, to bid him be of good cheer, 
 to let him understand that we are also 
 fighting a battle ; we are bound not to 
 irritate him, nor press hardly upon him 
 nor help his lower self. We must feel 
 as a brother towards the man beside us, 
 and say to him the things that we should 
 like to have said to us, and treat him 
 as we should desire to be treated when 
 our hands are hanging down and our 
 hearts are heavy. And this is the very 
 essence of courtesy. 
 
 Just because the machinery of life is so 
 
170 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 apt to be heated, one keenly appreciates 
 those who are ever deftly pouring in the 
 cooling oil, by their patience and their tact, 
 their sweetness and their sympathy. And 
 one resents keenly that class of people who 
 are honest and well meaning, but who 
 are persistently discourteous and are not 
 ashamed I mean the man who is credited 
 with what is called a bluff, blunt manner, 
 and who credits himself with a special 
 quality of downrightness and straightfor- 
 wardness. He considers it far better to 
 say what he thinks, and boasts that he 
 never minces his words, and people make 
 all kinds of excuses for him, and rather talk 
 as if he were a very fine fellow, beside 
 whom civil-spoken persons are little better 
 than hypocrites. As a matter of fact, no 
 one can calculate the pain this outspoken 
 
COURTESY 171 
 
 gentleman causes in a single day, both in 
 his family and outside. Nor have I ever 
 been able to understand why he is praised, 
 or even tolerated, and why he is not sharply 
 dealt with as an offender against the 
 social peace. He is said to deal faithfully 
 with any person of whom he disapproves 
 it would be right to say he deals inso- 
 lently; and what is called faithfulness is, 
 generally, unpardonable impudence. " His 
 bark," it is said, " is worse than his bite," 
 and one hopes it may be, but I do not see 
 what consolation it is for me, when this 
 ill-mannered person barks at my heels, 
 that he has not also bitten me. I object to 
 his barking, and if he persists I am justi- 
 fied in using a stick. No man has any 
 right to lecture his neighbour, or to intrude 
 upon his neighbour's privacy, or to wound 
 
172 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 his neighbour's feelings, and when he does 
 so in his role of the plain-spoken man, then 
 he ought to be made to understand the 
 difference between reality and rudeness 
 and taught to keep a civil tongue in his 
 head. No doubt there are occasions when 
 courtesy is no longer an obligation, but 
 practically they may be limited to a few 
 experiences fortunately very rare in life. 
 If any man should so forget himself as to 
 speak disrespectfully of one's mother or 
 one's wife, or if any one should set himself 
 deliberately to insult one's religion, or if 
 one should seek to lead a person from the 
 paths of virtue, then it is not the time 
 to pick one's speech, or to safeguard this 
 ruffian's sensibility. " Get thee behind me, 
 Satan," was what the Perfect Man said to 
 His own friend when that friend was sug- 
 
COUETESY 173 
 
 gesting that He should avoid the Cross, 
 and we can say nothing stronger than that 
 to a deliberate offender. There are times 
 when the steel hand should be used without 
 the velvet glove, when the strongest words 
 of speech are called for, and in the end are 
 the kindest. 
 
 Controversy, on the other hand, ought 
 rather to be an opportunity for the most 
 careful and generous courtesy. If any one 
 differ from us in politics or religion, or in 
 the affairs of business or our family, we are 
 bound to believe that he loves truth as 
 passionately, and desires to fulfil righteous- 
 ness as fully, as we do, and that if in this 
 matter he has not seen so clearly, yet that 
 he is as religious, as intelligent, as high- 
 principled, and as kind-hearted as we con- 
 sider ourselves to be, or as, in our highest 
 
174 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 moments, we really are. It is unpardon- 
 able to impute to an opponent mercen- 
 ary motives of action, disloyalty to the 
 common cause of goodness, indifference to 
 the highest ends, and personal unworthi- 
 ness of character. This is bad manners, 
 and proves an inherent pettiness and 
 squalor of soul the moral narrowness of 
 a man who cannot imagine goodness dis- 
 sociated from his opinions, or carried out 
 by other than his methods. Controversy 
 is a severe trial of temper and character, 
 but we ought to be thankful that if it has 
 sometimes turned friends into enemies, it 
 has also as often turned strangers into 
 friends. There have been famous debates 
 in history, wherein opponents have sent 
 their articles, one to the other, before 
 publication, that any unfair argument 
 
COURTESY 175 
 
 might be noted and omitted, and in his 
 own limited experience the writer can bear 
 testimony that this honourable custom is 
 still observed. 
 
 Surely there is no one who does not 
 desire to live after the rule of courtesy, 
 and there is no way of attaining this fine 
 spirit except by keeping high company. 
 Just as we live in the atmosphere of 
 nobility, where people are generous, and 
 chivalrous, and charitable, and reverent, 
 shall we learn the habit of faultless 
 manners, and acquire the mind which in- 
 spires every word and deed with grace. 
 And the highest fellowship is open unto 
 every man, and he that walks therein 
 catches its spirit. For the very perfect 
 knight of human history, who carried 
 Himself without reproach from the cradle 
 
176 HOMELY VIRTUES 
 
 to the grave, was our Lord and Master 
 Christ, and the rudest who follow Him 
 will take on the character of His gentle- 
 ness. 
 
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